


As The Plant That Doesn't Bloom

by TheLongDefeat



Category: Glass (2019), Split (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, The Ending We Were Meant to Have
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 18:36:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20587160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLongDefeat/pseuds/TheLongDefeat
Summary: Warned by Mr. Glass, Casey makes a different choice on the lawn outside Raven Hill. This is the story of a world where the Beast - and all those who share the body of Kevin Crumb - survive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am too fascinated by Kevin Crumb and his perverse and perversely touching relationship with Casey Cooke to let the man stay dead. This story will imagine a world in which they continue to be drawn together and drawn apart, Crumb contends with the reality of his heinous crimes, and Casey must wrestle with the knowledge that she is feeling drawn to create another relationship with a violent, dangerous man who has done terrible things. 
> 
> Title and opening stanza are from One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII by Pablo Neruda.

_~*~_

_ I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries _

_ the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, _

_ and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose _

_ from the earth lives dimly in my body. _

  


~*~

Kevin Crumb escaped, and in a different sense, so did Casey Cooke.

Elijah Price, before the Beast crushed his chest wall, turned to the-girl-that-got-away and said, “Every hero has a weakness - David has the water, I have my bones. He has you. It took me a while, but I can see it now. And Dr. Staple sees it to.” 

She had only a few precious minutes to digest this enigmatic statement, but as she held the Beast’s fist in her hands, looked into the flat glossy black of his eyes, she realized she had a choice.

If she let him go, he would continue to maim and kill and terrorize, unchecked, virtually unstoppable.

If she held on, she would lose him - this strange and terrifying creature, this man who was weak for her, who looked at her, no matter who inhabited his body, like he never wanted to look away. 

She knew she had to stop him. She knew he had to die. But Casey had been denied so much for so long, and she was tired of being in pain.

She let him go.

~*~

David Dunn drowned in a puddle. An ignoble death for a noble man. Casey saw Joseph a few times, meeting up in coffee shops pretending to be the adults they really weren’t. He was a quieter person now, that frantic energy gone, long silences stretching between the two of them that became unbearably full of words neither could say. 

“I could help you find him,” Joseph offered her once. “It’s what my dad would’ve wanted.”

“And what happens when we find him?” Casey picked her chipping nail polish absently, looking out the window at the happy sleeping people strolling by. “Hand him over to the authorities?”

She felt Joseph’s eyes on her, sad and uncomprehending. “The beast has to be stopped, Casey.”

“I know,” she said. She pulled out a five dollar bill from her pocket and set it on the table. “I know.”

The next time Joseph texted asking for coffee, she didn’t reply.

~*~

She spent the first few months scouring news reports across the country, looking for signs of his pattern - missing young girls, maimed bodies, cannibalism. She refused to acknowledge the thrill of hope each time she entered the terms in her search engine, refused to accept she was hoping to find evidence of his crimes. 

She never found anything.

Had he died after all? Had they found him and destroyed him? It was plausible, and Casey was by no means owed any notification if they had. It seemed less likely that he had simply given up on murder, although perhaps he had gotten better at disguising his MO. 

The absence of him - the absence of any knowledge of his ongoing existence - felt to Casey like a gnawing hunger, a void inside of her. She was constantly preoccupied by the memories of Dennis’ knotted brows, or Hedwig’s shrieking laughter, or the softening expression of wonder as Kevin saw her for the second time. The Beast, as he spotted her across the front lawn of Raven Hill, stopping short, chest heaving with his growling breaths, and staring at her like she was something _ exceptional_.

“You’re not,” she reminds herself, running late to work. She graduated high school in June, graduated from the foster care system a few months after that. She works now making sandwiches in a deli and gazing in periodic amazement at the sum of money the judge awarded her from her uncle - by no means extravagant, but more than she had imagined having. 

She arrives at the shop a few minutes late. The manager shoots her a sour look. Casey has been no luckier in finding friends than she ever was, but the hard edge of rage she lived with for so many years has softened, and terror that shaped her every waking moment as a child has faded into a white noise of anxiousness she can tolerate. She looks normal at long last, and that is a gift. 

“Sorry I’m late,” she mumbles, pulling an apron over her head. She has been distracted. This morning she woke with the sun to buy train tickets and pack her room into boxes. Her roommate, a young man who left the foster home she was living in several months before her, had chewed his lip nervously as she folded each item of clothing with precision and set in into her duffel bag. 

The eight hour shift passes in a fog, Casey hardly aware of it all. She leaves with a grin on her face that feels foreign. Goes back to the apartment, drags her boxes down to pack into the car she bought on Craigslist four days ago. Climbs into the driver’s seat.

She pulls out onto the street, onto the highway, out of the state. Night falls, and the road dividers glitter off the black asphalt like diamonds. 

Casey is finally free.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter Kevin Crumb.

~*~

His love for the girl is an ache on the back of his tongue. 

It was Kevin, of course, who had fallen, but since Kevin had been shifting in and out of the light, he and Dennis had begun to blur, as they had been in the beginning - a muddled tangle of thought and feeling, Dennis absorbing into the sturdy steel frames of his heart what Kevin could not bear to hold. And the love had wedged itself deep in there, nestled, contained, or so Dennis believed - he had imagined it as a pearl, smoothed by the roughness of his thoughts of her; beautiful, shining, precious - but in reality it had been a seed. The seed took root, the bud grew green and tall, and soon his love for the girl had infected the boy, had even infected the Beast. Perhaps it had spread farther, but Dennis did not ask, afraid to be discovered as patient zero of the disease. 

They never spoke of her, not even Hedwig, clueless child that he was. Certainly not Kevin, who mostly slept, or rose to the surface of their thoughts to weep and lament and beg for death. It was Patricia who would sink him back down, calm and firm and without sympathy. 

“Kevin is a danger,” she would say to Dennis in soft troubled tones when they had a brief moment alone, “he should never have been given so much information.”

“He’s unhappy,” Dennis would reply.

“Why?” Patricia would ask, giving him a shrewd look.

Dennis would not answer.

And so Dennis, unaccustomed to being in love but very accustomed to cleaning up troublesome messes, packed the love they felt away into a box and tucked the box in a dusty uninhabited corner of their mind. Love, being a living thing, vibrant and hungry for the sun, rattled in its cage; Dennis would crack the lid on occasion, let it seep out, shining and too bright to look at. It would fill him from tip to toe, buzzing in his fingers and prickling at his eyes, and he would think of her - of kissing her, licking her, sliding inside of her, but also of the dark brown of her eyes, of the remembered feel of her palm sliding against his forearm, the way she looked at him with such anguished understanding. 

“We are the same,” Kevin had said, and she had smiled, as though this were something which pleased her, as though to be like him was not a curse from which she longed to escape. 

He tried not to remember her time in the basement, paralyzed with fear of him. Her expression in the car as he lunged forward with the chloroform. He tried not to remember grabbing the other one, her howls of terror, the stench of her urine as she scrabbled helplessly against his chest. He tried not to remember warning Casey about the Beast, promising it would devour her within the day - couldn’t help but remember her screaming sobs as he closed the door behind him, her fists pounding on the wall. He had caged her, beautiful wild thing that she was, and he hated himself for it. Had nearly killed her. 

Because of the Beast.

With these thoughts sometimes rose the dreaded memory of Dr. Fletcher, her warm eyes, the way she’d move creakingly to open the door for him on his way out, her habit of chewing her thumbnail. The familiar smell of her perfume. The weight of her unconscious body as she fell against him, as he carried her. Old, weak. Defenseless. And so kind.

Dennis ground his teeth together, tolerating the scorching pain of these memories as they boiled across his mind.

Kevin, deep below the dark waters of their unconscious, also dreamed of the girl - Dennis could sense it at times, a shimmering white light filtering up through the murky pools. In his dreams, Kevin imagined a world in which they had met by chance, and she liked him at once and never feared him, and she grew to know him, to love him. And she chose him - she chose, she chose, she chose, and nobody had compelled it of her. 

Dennis would let these memories and fantasies overwhelm him until his throat was aching and his cheeks were red and he could bear it no longer. He would then return it to its box, and return the box to the far corner, and ignore the sound of its clattering for escape until it grew too loud again. 

It was a soft sort of agony, being the holder of this love. Dennis was tormented by it just as much, and in some ways more, than he had been by the lashes and the punches and the burns and the cuts and the screams and long, long hours locked away. It was his purpose to be strong - his duty to take the pain - to provide a power even the Beast could not: the power of quiet suffering, of endurance. He would love her and he would never have her. Such was one more burden on his bent back.

And such it would have been, no doubt, if not for one other factor Dennis forgot: the Beast had been infected with this love, and he was not a creature much inclined to accepting an unwanted destiny.


	3. Chapter 3

_ Six Months Later. _

Los Angeles, Casey finds, is a disjointed place. She feels as she passes through the different neighborhoods that she is shifting between different worlds: the glimmering wealth of the hills, millionaires perched in their strange boxy houses that jut like uneven teeth from the cliff faces; back down to the gritty poverty of the flats, scabby small dogs yapping with their paws up against chainlink fences, brightly-colored stucco cottages with bars on the windows and Virgin Mary candles stacked on the patio fences. Wild parrots flock in the fruit trees growing in postage stamp backyards; peacocks strut across the flat colorless surburban driveways in the blistering sun. 

Casey holds a letter in her hand. She had opened it clumsily, ripping the envelope, peeling back the thin plastic barrier that protected the address printed in cold typographical font on the front. Had read the contents: brief, sterile words that lodged like shrapnel in some ill-defined anatomical region between her stomach and her heart. 

John Cooke is dead.

Casey folds the letter along the premade creases, tucks it back into the torn envelope. Sets it down on the passenger seat of her car. She is parked in her gently used Toyota on the side of Figueroa Street, just off the 110, little clusters of stores on either side of her, tailors and nail salons and machine shops. 

There is a pinched, painful longing inside of her to tell someone, though there is of course no one to tell, except perhaps Joseph, but she has refused to look at the twenty or thirty unread messages from him these past six months and she isn’t planning on doing so now. And anyways he wouldn’t really understand. There is only one person who ever really seemed to understand, and she certainly can’t tell him. 

She can’t linger. She is expected at work in fifteen minutes and god knows traffic on the 110 at this time of day is nothing to kid about, so she pulls a squealing U-turn across four lanes of zooming cars, her fists clenching the steering wheel, jolting with the blaring sound of the horns as it moves electrically down her spine. 

~*~

Back at her apartment at the end of her day, Casey Cooke tucks the envelope into a crack at the back of her dresser, and closes the drawer. She will tuck the knowledge of John’s death away within herself, as she has tucked the knowledge of what he did to her. 

It is a strange thing, knowing he is dead. The fact of his non-existence sits in opposition to the reality of his presence, the reality of the man who stands with a rifle braced on his beefy forearm, the grinning face waiting behind each turn of rock in the forest. In the eternal september wilderness of her mind, there is a creature on its hands and knees, howling up to the treetops, beckoning her, reaching for her with wide open hands. 

She closes her eyes, trying to banish the monster back into the woods. He is not, after all, the only beast she’s known: she conjures up a different heaving growl, the breadth of other shoulders. Remembers the crow-black of his blown pupils, the curl of his grimacing smile. Imagines him tearing John’s throat with his teeth, or maybe it is her teeth; the images blur; she sits down heavily on her mattress and she is in the basement again, fighting for her life, deep below the earth where nobody could find her: not even John, who had always, always, always found her. 

Casey presses her face into her hands. Takes a breath.

She had come to California for a new life, to leave the past behind. But she often feels as though the past is more present than ever: that the girl who played the bad game is still standing there, frozen, one hand on her sweater zipper; the girl in the basement beneath the zoo still beats her fists against the wall and screams; the girl who saved the Beast is still holding his feverish fists in her hands, looking into that pained snarling face, caging him with her touch. 

A knock at the door jars her from her thoughts.

“Hi,” she says, stepping back. Stuart is holding a bottle of wine and grinning in that nervous way of his, not quite looking at her. 

“I thought we could take a load off tonight,” he says, setting the bottle on her countertop. He moves like a stick insect, sharp and slightly unnatural. 

Casey goes to pull out two glasses.

They spend the evening in quiet companionship, little bursts of arhythmic conversation throughout. Stuart kisses her after nightfall, and she lets him, though his lips feel cold and mealy, and her body is sluggish to respond. She places her hands on his shoulders like she is dancing at prom. He opens his lips and licks her mouth.

Casey stands up from the couch.

“I’m tired,” she says, carefully looking away as Stuart shifts his erection into a more comfortable alignment.

“Sure,” he says, standing as well. “It was good to see you again, Case.”

Once he’s left, Casey climbs into her bed, curling onto her side and staring out her window. In the darkness she can see the glimmering lights of downtown, hear the rumble of passing cars, the jittery chatter of drunk people wandering the sidewalks below. The barking of dogs, the crooning of nighttime birds. 

As she falls asleep, Casey imagines his flinty gaze, the downward purse of his mouth, and she wonders if he is just outside, seeing her, assuring himself of her safety and warmth.

~*~

In Mississippi, it is mostly the slow speech of Patricia, her bird-like poise. They get along well enough with the money they had saved, sleeping in fields, watching the swarms of lightening bugs as they devour the ink black sky. Patricia swims down into the cold dark pools of their mind, and she finds it hunched and breathing, crows wings fanning out along its back, the pits of its eyes bending down upon her face.

_ Give us direction, _ she pleads. _ Give us purpose. _

But the Beast only turns its head.

So they drift ever on and on and on, weeks stretching into months, long nights spent curled in the trailers of long-haul truckers, boiling hot days spent dozing under scrubby roadside bushes. In Denver it is Barry, all smiles and wit, working as a barback, tossing handfuls of paper each night scrawled with telephone numbers. _ What now? _wonders Barry, touching the soft threads of his scarf, trying to imagine what Dr. Fletcher would have told him, had the beast inhabiting his body not crushed her spine. 

He can think of nothing she would have said.

In the Rocky Mountains it is Dennis, his silence and precision, no need for softness or charm in this desolate land, chalky Aspen trees sticking up out of the sloping hills like sun-bleached bones. He gets them work on a ranch and they sleep in a bed for the first time since the hospital, and he is finally clean, he is finally able to loosen his shoulders and breath, knowing that Kevin was - for the moment - safe. It is not what he wants: what he wants is too great a thing to be imagined, a terrible gnawing hunger in his soul, and he tries not to imagine her eyes, tries not to remember how she said his name. It is not what he wants, but it feels like enough, it feels like more than they deserve. So Dennis says, _ let’s rest here. _

And yet it is not three months before the wings spread and the demon swims up to breach the surface of their mind. _ It is time, _the Beast groans. 

_ Time for what? _Dennis says, imagining mutilated bodies, jagged teeth shredding unblemished skin. 

The Beast gives him a snarling smile.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection." 
> 
> \- Arthur Schopenhauer

~*~

He found her. He found her.

But this is telling things out of order.

The traditions of oral histories teach us the importance of rhythm and repetition. Generations can pass down knowledge in the swing sway of their words, and each time the story is told it is changed, but not damaged: it is grown, shaped like clay into a better and more fitting thing. Casey thinks she understands this. 

Her hand is on his chest. She feels the whump-whump of his heart, the flare of his ribs with each breath.

“Casey,” he says. 

She shakes her head. “I’m not that girl anymore.”

~*~   
  


She wouldn’t say she’d healed, but she would say she’d grown. Stuart was a good and kind man who loved her and with whom she felt she could be normal. He had only the vaguest idea of her past, but he held everything he knew with quiet acceptance. 

She went to work every day. She had friends she could laugh with. She was thinking about going back to school.

In the eternal september wilderness of her mind, there remained a young girl hiding in a tent. There is a monster waiting behind a turn of rock. There is a father who sleeps and does not wake. The seasons of this wilderness never change; the monster never wearies of his wait; the girl never opens the zipper of her tent. 

Unforeseen, unlooked for, a beast crunches through the leaves, tears open the side of her hiding place. Looks in at her with crow-black eyes and says, “come with me.”

~*~

Casey stretches her arms above her head, trying to shake out the tension in her body. It had taken the baby an hour to go down for the night, swaying him hip to hip until he finally succumbed to exhaustion. His mother said he’d been teething, and Casey wished she’d paid more attention when the woman had been going on about how he liked his gums soothed.

She’d always been told she was a natural with children, but it didn’t feel natural, holding this squawling creature as it exhausted itself with its own misery. 

The baby’s mother would be home any minute now, and Casey couldn’t wait to be done for the day, off to meet Stuart for a beer before they went back to his place for the night.

Casey hears the key in the lock of the front door and comes down the stairs. Megan, the baby’s mother, steps through with a harried look on her face, two bags of groceries balanced against her chest. 

“How’re things?”

“He just went down,” Casey sighs, trying not to let her frustration show. “The teething.”

His mother nods, setting the bags down on the countertop. “Did you give him advil?”

Casey mutely shakes her head. 

His mother slightly frowns, shooting her a brief reproachful look. “Next time,” she instructs. “Anyways, time for you to get on with your life.”

Casey half-smiles, nods, slings her bag over her shoulder.

She isn’t close to her boss, or to the family as a whole. She loves the baby - Jimmy was his name - with a fierceness that frightens her at times, and she thinks Megan can sense this, and though Megan respects it she cannot approve of it. Casey has never felt at ease around mothers. 

Casey kicks at the nuts on the sidewalks that have fallen from the autumn trees, stepping over cracks. She isn’t looking up, and so the awareness of someone watching her comes like a chill down her back. She stops. Raises her head.

The recognition moves through her like a bolt of lightning, and she stands, thunderstruck, soaked to the bone in the storm of it - the impossible truth of him standing there, leaning on the passenger door of her gently used Toyota, looking down at his boots like he could be anybody.

“Kevin,” she says.

He flinches a little, stiffening, and she knows at once it is Dennis, though he isn’t wearing his glasses. He is dressed in a silver sweater and a collared shirt and dark jeans, and she had forgotten just how handsome he is, the narrow blade of his hips, the muscles of his thighs, the broad power of his shoulders. He looks at her from under his brows, eyes moving hungrily over her face. He says nothing.

She takes a step, a second step. Presses the palm of her hand into his chest. Feels the soft fabric of his sweater, the heat of his skin beneath it. 

“Casey,” he says, and the name falls from his lips like a prayer. A benediction.

She shakes her head. “I’m not that girl anymore.”

~*~

She doesn’t ask him why he’s here. They sit together in a diner, not speaking. Casey had texted Stuart, told him she wouldn’t make their date tonight. Had not offered a reason. It feels like a betrayal.

“So,” Dennis says, and his voice is croaking, and she realizes he is nervous. He is folding and unfolding his paper napkin like he is going to make origami. “You work with kids.”

“How long have you been watching me?”

His eyes snap to her face, jerk away. The waitress comes with Casey’s soda and Dennis’ coffee. Dennis wraps his hands around the mug and does not drink. “Just wanted to make sure you’re doin’ alright.”

Casey sips at her soda. “I am.” She levels him with a carefully neutral look. “How did you escape all those cops?”

Dennis draws in a deep breath, exhales it slowly. Sets aside his precisely folded napkin. 

Casey nods, drawing idle shapes in the condensation of her glass of soda. “I looked all through the newspapers for you, scoured the web. They’d leaked the videos of… of the Beast. Elijah Price had. But I guess they - the government or whoever - scrubbed it clean pretty quick, cos I couldn’t find anything about you. Like you’d just disappeared.”

Dennis stares moodily out the window. “I’m glad you got away from all that mess,” he says softly.

Casey reaches forward and touches Dennis’ hand. His skin is warmer than she expects, rough, soft hairs on the base of his hand where it meets his wrist. Her touch sends a shudder through his body so that for a moment she expects somebody else to take the light. But the eyes that stare down at her fingers and then creep up towards her face are the same eyes, hard and yet oddly soft. “Can I speak to Kevin?” she asks. 

Dennis shakes his head slowly from side to side. “Kevin is… Kevin is not doing so good these days.” There is an odd tremor in his voice that Casey can’t quite place. He winces suddenly like there is a pain in his head. “Hedwig wants to say hello.”

Casey nods.

The boy emerges with a gusty sigh, and then he is up and climbing into her booth before she realizes what is happening. He wraps his arms around her middle and tucks his head against her stomach.

Other diners are staring at them.

“Hedwig,” she says, “sit up. Big boys don’t slouch over like this.”

“We missed you,” Hedwig says into the sweater she’s wearing. “We missed you so, so, so much.” He pulls himself upright. There are tears in his eyes, dripping down his cheeks.

Casey thumbs them away. She strokes the smoothness of his freshly shaven cheek. “I missed you too. Tell me: what have you been doing since I saw you last?”

Hedwig shrugs, reaching over to slurp at Casey’s soda. “Nuffin’. Sometimes we slept outside and it was gross and cold. Sometimes we even had to pee and poo outside. Sometimes we had jobs and could sleep in beds and things. Now we live in a garage but it’s got a TV and a nice bed. The TV is old though.” He looks up at her, desperately eager. “Do you want to live with us? We could make a nice bed for you! You could see my movies, and I’ve been listening to Drake and Post Malone, and--”

“No, Hedwig. I won’t live with you.” Casey pushes him back so that he is sitting upright, not touching her. “Hedwig, where is the Beast?”

Hedwig stares down at the linoleum countertop. Cracks his neck, furrows his brow, is Dennis. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well. We’re all glad to see that.”

Casey nods. She feels a sudden swell of anger, and sinks her teeth into her lower lip. “Things are good here. I’ve been seeing this guy, he’s really sweet. Smart. Studying math at UCLA.”

She is not sure what she’s hoping for: jealousy, perhaps? Dennis’ trademark scowl? But when he looks up at her, it is with a liquid sort of openness, a painful joy. “I am so glad to hear that. It… I can’t tell you how much it means to us to know that you’ve… you’ve moved on from everything that happened.” He nods to himself, exhaling sharply. “You deserve somebody who can take good care of you.”

Dennis rises, dropping down more than enough to pay for them both. 

“I have to go,” he says, though she is sure he has nowhere to be. “I…” he trails off, not quite managing to meet her eyes.

“It’s been good to see you,” she says, feeling guilty. 

He nods, and turns to leave.

“Dennis!” she says, “wait!”

He stops, yellow handkerchief gripping the handle of the diner’s front door. Looks at her with that flinty expression that seems so familiar. 

“When will I see you again?” she asks.

His gaze drifts out of focus, and she sees in a fraction of a second that there is a splinter of agony in his eyes that goes deep, deep, deep. It is gone before she finishes realizing it was there at all. “Probably best that you don’t,” he says, and disappears out the door. 

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

~*~

He can feel the Beast moving inwardly, a coiling and a sense of painful stretching. It lends him an unnatural strength, a ghost of the other one’s power. A temptation.

Dennis, hanging by his fingers from the chin up bar he had drilled into the door frame of the rear entrance to the garage where they now live, pulls himself up in a smooth motion until his chin fully passes the bar. Lowers himself slowly. He is on his thirty-fifth repetition and his arms do not burn and his heart is not pounding. His usual limit is thirty-six reps - it is always a multiple of twelve because twelve is his special number - but today he feels he could do much, much more.

He feels a buzzing golden pleasure in his body that seems to whisper, and he tries very hard not to listen, not to notice. He is preparing himself for something the likes of which he has never faced, and he needs to be focused, to be absolutely prepared. Dennis exhales on his thirty-sixth chin up. He has completed his three twelves, and the symmetry and rightness of this hums along his skin like a soothing touch. 

Barry bumps against him, arches sensuously against his consciousness like a cat looking for a stroke. Dennis begins to resist, but then he pauses. Now, he supposes, is as good a time as any.

Dennis drops from the bar and hands over the light.

“Ugh,” says Barry, stretching his cramping arms. He touches his shoulders with a grimace. “Why do you have to make us so big, Dennis? We look like a Chippendale dancer.” Expecting no answer, Barry snakes through the neatly piled boxes of their clothes and other possessions and sits down at the desk pressed into a mildewy corner by the garage door. He turns on their laptop and yawns as he waits for it to boot up. 

As Barry watches the computer load, he becomes gradually aware that he is feeling desperately horny. He rolls his eyes; it is not an unusual thing when taking the light from prudish, repressed, pervy Dennis. Barry lounges back in his chair, stretching his legs out, letting his head loll against the back rest.

Eases his palm onto the zipper of his jeans, not quite touching his erection, gearing himself up. Lets the want thicken in him until it is a honeyed sweetness and he is breathing quietly through his mouth, cheeks flushed. Unbuttons his jeans, lowers the zipper tooth by tooth. 

He touches just the tips of his fingers to the sensitive skin on the underside of his cock and there is a sudden, jarring flash of  _ her  _ face as her full lips parted without sound - the girl from the basement, the girl who had lived -

“Fucking lech,” Barry snarls, sitting forward in surprise. His cock is aching now, uncomfortably hard. 

Barry folds himself backwards into the misty dark:

Dennis is not in his chair. Barry frowns, rooting around the room until he stumbles around a shadowy corner he hadn’t remembered. Sees Dennis drawing uneven breaths, hissing angrily in the dark to something that Barry couldn’t quite make out -

something big -

_ Why are you here? You should be in the Light!  _

Dennis is looking at him with a boiling hatred that makes Barry reel back several steps. His eyes are flashing, teeth bared in a snarl, and the lens of his glasses are broken. 

_ Back!  _ Dennis roars,  _ back, back or I’ll fucking -  _ Dennis unbuckles his belt, zips it through the loops, wraps the buckle end around one fist and cracks the strap down into the other hand in an unmistakable gesture of threat. 

Barry scrambles back into the light with a gasp. He is panting now for a different reason, and tucks his flaccid penis back into his pants and zips up. “Fucking asshole,” Barry swears, trying to shake off his alarm.

Dennis had always been the enforcer, the disciplinarian; the one who used his power and his force to make the other alters comply. But Dennis only enforced absolutes: only beat them to make them stronger, to keep them safe, to make them do what  _ must  _ be done to survive. He was not, by nature, a cruel or bloodthirsty man. Barry cannot imagine what would have set him off this time. 

This would require further investigation, no doubt. Once upon a time, Barry would have intervened at once, would have had the authority and strength to force Dennis back in his chair and have a discussion.

Not anymore: Barry was diminished. The world that had seemed for so many years to be growing safer and softer had taken a dark, dangerous turn that had made even Dennis seem inadequate to face its threats, not to mention Barry. Dr. Fletcher had been telling Barry for years that it was social skills and relationships that would make Kevin safe, not brutal strength and exacting precision. 

But Dr. Fletcher had been wrong. 

Barry closes his eyes, feeling exhausted of the world already. He hears Heinrich give an interested murmur and gladly hands off the light. 

~*~

Casey tells Stuart that Jimmy’s mom had been held up at work, and they speak no more of it. Casey returns to work the next day, and as she leaves at the end of the day, she pretends she is not looking for him, snapping her eyes to every rustling bush. 

She is good at pretending.

On the weekend, she and Stuart take a trip into Angeles National Forest, and they camp without tents in the cold clean air of the mountain, watching stars that glitter like jewels. They sleep under piles of blankets, Stuart’s warm smell of sweat and deodorant, and Casey feels -

she feels -

there is a snapping sound of something moving just outside the campground. Casey slithers out from their bed, creeps as quietly as she can towards the source of the noise.

Her heart is pounding, and not with fear. 

She finds a coyote nosing through some garbage from a neighboring campsite. It stiffens at the sight of her, slowly raising its narrow face towards hers, and the yellow eyes look at her without recognition. 

Casey lowers herself into a crouch. “Hello,” she says. “I thought you were my friend.”

The coyote opens its mouth into a hiccuping  _ yip-yip-yip _ that raises the hair on the back of Casey’s neck. Casey rises to return to camp, and the coyote’s sobbing laughter follows her all the way. 

~*~

Barry was born of others: a creature of worldly things. He was Kevin’s classmates, laughing arm in arm as they tripped down the hallways; he was Kevin’s coworkers, sharing secret smiles back and forth. He was the man lounging on the greasy bar top and talking to the girl while Kevin folded himself into some shadowy corner, watching without understanding. Barry was the answer to the problems that Dennis’ ferocity and Patricia’s cunning could not solve.

Dr. Fletcher had told Barry he was an  _ extroverted leader.  _ Barry had preened beneath this praise, imagining, as he basked in the warmth of her eyes, that this is what buds must feel just as they bloom into flowers. Barry was kind - he had been told so many times.

But Barry did not love.

Love, in many ways, was the antithesis of Barry: it was grasping, hungry, and intense where Barry was light and flighty and free. Love was an ache; Barry was a balm. 

Barry had enjoyed Dr. Fletcher and certainly was horrified at her death, but it had been Dennis who wept bitterly as he cradled the bracelet he had retrieved from her corpse. It was Hedwig who wandered their room at night, muttering the names of the girls the Beast had slaughtered as though invoking their spirits. Barry had shivered in revulsion at all that nastiness, and determined to move on.

The girl was changing things.

Barry had not met her - well, had hardly met her. She was nonetheless stamped in his memory, a ghost-girl who spoke without smiling, who noticed every little movement he made. He was aware that these must be Dennis’ impressions of her, so strong they had soaked through the fabric of Dennis and stained the rest of them. Dennis, the deviant; Dennis, the brute; Dennis, the holder of all the tumultuous feelings which might otherwise bang and clash and cause some kind of inward bleeding. 

Dennis, who had been missing for two and a half weeks.

Barry strode down the sidewalk, his shoulders browning in the blistering California sun. He was wearing a wife beater and some dark corduroy pants and boots, his favorite beanie off-center on his head. He was on his way to a show, trying not to think of the girl and mostly failing.

He wasn’t sure how to categorize these thoughts. He wasn’t fantasizing - he was not a particularly sexual person - and he wasn’t remembering, since he had almost nothing to remember. It was more of a… baseless conjecture; a lazy wondering: who might she be with, at this very moment? Was she close by? Could that be her, the dark splash of hair he saw spilled against the dirty window of the bus pulling out up ahead? 

Would she like the kind of music he liked?   
  


The thoughts were strange enough, but the feelings that came with them were stranger. Barry felt like he was cramping internally, like his organs were being pushed around; he worried at first that he might be seriously ill. The sense-memory of her lips as they brushed against his made something clench in his gut such that he nearly gagged. Had Dennis kissed her? The absolute pervert. 

Barry waited at a crosswalk, anxiously pressing the walk signal again and again and again. On the other corner a man with dark skin and liquid black eyes gave Barry a smile that made Barry feel beautiful. He pushed his shoulders back, cocked a hip, emphasized the lean musculature of his physique.

Did the girl like how his body looked?

Barry shook his head, darting forward as he realized he was about to miss his walk signal. “What is wrong with me?” he muttered to himself, jogging to loosen up the sticky thoughts in his head.

He didn’t really want an answer, but Patricia rested her cool fingertips on the base of his neck anyway. He smelled her perfume and slowed to a walk. “I wonder what’s got our pretty boy all twisted up in knots today, hm?”

He could hear the smile in her voice, predatory and cool like the flash of a blade before it parts flesh. “Don’t call me that, Patricia,” he says wearily, trying not to be too obvious that he is talking to himself. He does not want to draw attention: not in that way, at least. “I’m just out of sorts. I think it’s because Dennis is gone.”

“Oh?” Patricia asks, all innocence, “and yet wasn’t it you and your… supporters… who banished him from the Light all those years ago? Or tried to, at any rate.”

“This is different,” Barry says sullenly. He really doesn’t feel like fighting her. It had been hard enough before, with Dr. Fletcher right there across the room; it was scarcely imaginable now. “The world is different.”

“ _ The world is the same _ ,” Patricia says, her voice like a crack of breaking glass. Barry misses a step and nearly falls. “The world is the same: full of danger and lies and reckless hate. And sleeping, foolish people who have no idea what  _ suffering  _ even means. The world is the same. It is  _ we  _ that have changed.”

Barry takes a rest against the cool brick wall of the club, not ready to join the line. Calms his breathing in the way Dr. Fletcher taught him too. Maybe Patricia was right - he did feel changed. “I can’t stop thinking of that girl,” he confesses.

Patricia is silent for so long he thinks perhaps she has left, but at last she stirs, slowly stepping behind his back like a jaguar circling a limping deer. “That girl…” Patricia says, and her voice is only a breath, hardly a whisper. “The girl the Beast spared… Dennis wouldn’t die for her. He would only die for us.”

Barry pivots on his heel, his body going electric with shock. “Who said anything about Dennis dying?” he demands, and he catches a flash of Patricia’s ice-chip eyes, the blade her cheekbones, bloodless and pale, the willowy column of her neck - but then she is gone, and Barry is standing alone on the hot LA sidewalk speaking to himself. 

~*~

Casey debates answering one of the fifty or sixty unread text messages but decides against it. It’s too awkward now and anyways it’ll only seem like she’s answering because she has something she wants from him.

Which is true.

She is intensely nervous as she dials, the echoing of the ring making her head pulse with dizziness. He answers on the third ring.

“Casey?”

“Hey,” she says, sounding strangled to her own ears, “how the hell are you, Joseph?”

He is silent for a moment; she hears him exhaling through his nose on the other end of the line, and she imagines him in his warehouse, hunched alone in some cheap office chair as he stares pensively at his computer screen. “I’m fine,” he says, clipped. “And you? You’re in California now, right?”

“LA,” she confirms. “I’m glad you’re doing good. I, um, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. It was just… a difficult time. I felt like I needed to leave everything - everyone - in the past behind.”

“Everyone?” Joseph asks, and his voice is uncharacteristically hard. “Even Crumb? The authorities haven’t been able to trace him at all, but I’ve been looking at other sources and I have reason to believe he’s moving west.  _ Following you,  _ Casey. You’re not safe out there. Not until we catch him.”

“That’s actually what I was calling about,” she says, laughing without humor. “I was hoping you could help me catch him. He’s in LA.”

There is a pregnant pause where she can envision Joseph quite clearly: eyes closed, hand trembling against the phone - finally able to make his father’s dying wish a reality.

~*~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting moving.
> 
> Also, those of you who have a keen eye for James McAvoy's delightfully bare torso during Split & Glass may notice he is hairless. I refuse to write Dennis or Barry shaving their chests or getting waxed, so I've inserted a little realism and given him some slight body hair.

~*~

Casey creeps up the public cement staircase noiselessly, leaning close to the railing so that the sunflowers growing in the neighboring yard tower over her and provide some disguise. She pauses near the top of the stairs.

The four orange stucco bungalows perch quiet and unassuming on the hill, overgrown with wild grasses and tall flowers. She can just see the door that leads into the garage where he lives, assuming Joseph has done his job correctly - and he nearly always did.

_ Wait, _ Joseph had begged her, _ wait for the police to come - or at least me. _

But if the police came there would be death and carnage and the world needed no more of that. Kevin Crumb didn’t belong in a cage. Casey just had to make sure he wouldn’t hurt anybody else.

It takes her ten or fifteen minutes to summon the courage to approach the door, but just as she steps forward it opens. The man himself emerges wearing a purple hoodie and cargo pants. He sees her instantly, and for a moment they both stand rooted to the spot.

His face splits into a grin. 

“Casey!” he howls, loping towards her clumsily, his hands bunched in the pocket of his sweater. He approaches her with his head down, looking up at her goofily from under his brow. When he reaches her he presses his forehead into her neck. His skin is warm, his breath hot as blooms along her throat. “You came and found us!”

“Yes,” she says, realizing she is smiling as her hands rest shakily against his broad shoulders. “Hi, Hedwig.”

He leans up at the sound of his name, pressing forward so his hip is against hers, his hands fluttering around her jacket, now playing with the strings, now feeling the buttons, as though he can’t decide what part of her he wants to touch first. “Did you come to play with us, etcetera?”

She feels overwhelmed by his nearness. She is suddenly flooded with memories of her time beneath the zoo: she recognizes his shoulders, so much broader than hers though he isn’t much taller, and the smell of him - shaving cream and something salty, nothing like Stuart at all. During those dark hours in the basement she had memorized the veins in his hands and the sharp angle of his jaw such that it scorches her now, so familiar, close enough to touch. “Yeah, I do want to play with you,” she says, feeling her cheeks heating with the innuendo he won’t catch. “I want to see your new house.”

“Okay!” he hollers, darting back towards the door. “It’s lucky you came now because the neighbors are gone and that’s the only time I’m allowed to go out and play. Let me show you my bicycle! Mr. Dennis found it and was fixing it up for me before he left.” He stops by the doorway and pulls a tarp off of a fixie bike with a banana-yellow seat, the gears rusted. “I can’t wait til I can ride it, etcetera.”

Casey touches the peeling leather of the seat, dry and brittle. “What do you mean, before Dennis left?”

Hedwig is already inside the garage, so she follows him. There are strange objects piled up all over - deconstructed radios, car engine parts, pieces of old mannequins - and it smells of mildew. She notices a mattress on the floor, bedclothes all in a pile, and dirty clothes strewn around. 

Dennis really was gone, if the state of things was any indication. 

Casey feels her phone vibrate in her pocket, and silences it. She will investigate the issue with Dennis later. For now, she draws in a breath and asks, “Hedwig, have Ms. Patricia and Mr. Dennis kidnapped any more girls?”

Hedwig shrinks away like a whipped dog, looking at her over her shoulder. “I don’t wanna talk about that,” he whines.

Casey feels dread knotting in her stomach and walks towards him on impulse, tugging on his arm until he faces her. She presses her hands to his cheeks; he shudders beneath her touch, leaning heavily into her. “I know it’s hard. But it’s important to tell me: have they taken any girls since you left Philadelphia?”

Hedwig’s expression bunches up in concentration. “The Beast has been sleeping,” he says. “So no girls for a while. Mr. Dennis has been down there talking to him for a long time.”

“Talking to him?” Casey’s phone buzzes again, and then she hears a noise outside: the whump-whump-whump of a helicopter circling overhead.

Casey feels time begin to slow.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone. There are two texts from Joseph Dunn: the first reads, _ Casey, they’re coming, _ and the second, _ I am so sorry. _

“Hedwig,” Casey says, pushing her phone back in her pocket. “Listen very carefully. We are going to have to---”

She never finishes telling him her wild plan of escape. The door bursts open and shouts fill the garage; men stream in, weapons drawn; Hedwig wails in shock and terror. Casey is seized by an officer and pinned against the concrete floor. Craning her head, she sees Hedwig surrounded by five or six officers and hears the taser release and Hedwig scream in agony.

Sees Hedwig collapse, writhing on the ground. Sees him go still. Sees Hedwig rising slowly, slowly, but it is of course not Hedwig, it is something… much more.

She recognizes the crow-black of his eyes and the sound of his heaving breaths. The officers are slaughtered in thirty or forty seconds; reinforcements stream in and meet a similar fate. The garage floor is slick with oily blood, and Casey spits it out as it streams past her lips.

The Beast turns his head to regard her impassively. 

The officer at her back has his gun pressed between Casey’s shoulder blades. “Move,” says the officer calmly, “and I’ll kill this girl.”

~*~

What happened after that passed in a blur that Casey has trouble piecing together; she thinks the drugs confused her memory. She recalls the Beast pawing at himself and growling as though in physical pain, and then falling to his hands and knees. She recalls Dennis’ voice, thready and gasping, as he begged them to spare her life. 

She wakes in a darkness black enough to taste. It is cold, and the ground feels smooth, like tile. She is not in any pain but her head is swimming with the after-effects of the sedative, and for a moment she is convinced she is back in the basement under the zoo: but then she had been on a bed, with a blanket.

Now she was pressed up against a wall.

She rises slowly, her breath too loud in the silence. She can see absolutely nothing.

Casey takes several minutes to gather herself, retreating inward to the silent, spaceless plane which existed inside herself: the relief of all suffering. She reemerges with a sense of buzzing calm, and begins to feel her way around the prison.

She feels only floor and wall until her hands meet the heat and softness unmistakable as a human body. She hears a faint groan and feels muscles coiling under her palm; moving her hands lightly, she realizes she’s touching the person’s stomach. It is a man’s stomach: hard, the muscles of the abdomen defined enough to feel, with a dusting of hair near the navel.

“Kevin?”

There is a soft sigh. “No,” says the man, and Casey feels her whole body go slack with a relief she cannot explain.

“Dennis,” she says, and leans forward on impulse until her forehead is pressed against his chest. She can feel his heart thumping - fast - and hear his slow breaths. “What happened?”

There is stillness and silence beneath her for a few moments. “Dunno,” he says, and his voice is as slurred as her thoughts feel. “Drugged,” he manages.

“Me too,” says Casey. She unfurls herself until she is lying lengthwise against him, touching him everywhere she can reach. She feels like he is the only thing giving her shape and substance in this dark place. Tears begin to burn at the seams of her eyes and her breath shudders with sobs. “Hold me,” she instructs.

There is no response for a few seconds, and Casey feels her face prickle with humiliated rejection; but then he shifts a little and an arm anchors around her middle. She lays her head on his shoulder, her palm fanned out against his chest, and she can remember that her father’s heart had beat as loudly, and she had felt safe there, too.

“Sleep,” Dennis commands, and Casey obeys. 

~*~

Casey wakes curled on the cold floor. She flinches with remembered fear as her eyes open to the pitch black, and she sits up too quickly, her head spinning. “Hello?” she whispers.

Had she only dreamed him?

“You’re awake,” she hears in answer. Her throat relaxes from its panicked spasm, and she gulps.

“Where are we?”

She hears a soft movement and guesses he is shaking his head before he remembers she can’t see him. “No idea,” he rumbles. “They came with food and water, I think. It should be a few feet in front of you, to the left.”

Casey crawls forward, pawing at the air carefully until her palm touches a cold steel cup. She feels it, and finds its twin beside it. She drinks one dry. “Yours is over here too,” she says, not sure why she is whispering. It seems sacrilegious, somehow, to speak aloud in such darkness. “Come get it.”

She hears him shuffling forward and feels his presence at her back, a few inches away. She reaches behind and rests a hand on his knee but he instantly flinches away. “Don’t touch,” he reprimands in a hiss.

Casey scowls. “How the hell can we not touch when we can’t _ see _? Don’t worry, I won’t sully your honor, princess.” She presses the cup against some part of him - his arm? - and he takes it from her without their fingers brushing.

He does not respond to her sarcasm. 

Casey investigates the plate of food - mushy and lukewarm. She eats it off her fingertips. It is some kind of plain legumes, perhaps lentils, and some shredded beef. She slides the second plate towards Dennis. “Bon appetit,” she says.

There are several seconds of him rustling around. “A fork?” he says at last.

“Not that I can find,” she answers.

He releases a shaky breath. “I can’t eat with my hands.”

“Then starve,” Casey snaps, feeling her patience wearing thin. There is a boiling tension in her stomach that is making her want to claw at her own skin. 

A thought strikes her, and her tongue darts out to wet her lips.

“You could eat off my hands.”

Silence stretches, oppressive. Casey tries to imagine what his expression might be. She finally scoops up some of his beans and raises it where she guesses his face is.

“It’s okay,” she reassures, “that way your hands can stay--” 

His hand touches her wrist, featherlight, a flutter of wings. His skin is rougher than hers and much warmer. 

Casey’s breath freezes in her lungs, and excitement flames through her body. She feels herself getting wet between her legs and almost shrivels with embarrassment. 

But Dennis only pushes her hand gently away. “No,” he says, his voice sounding choked. She hears him moving away to a far corner of the room. 

Casey eats the food off her fingers as quietly as she can. She pushes the tray away and curls up on the ground to wait.

~*~

Casey wakes sobbing in the dark. 

“Dennis?” she gasps, struggling upright.

“You were dreaming,” he says. He sounds like he is still on the other side of the room. 

Casey tries to calm herself. She is shaking all over, her thoughts racing. “Can I sit with you? Please?” Her voice is rasping with tears. She knows she is pathetic to be seeking comfort from this man of all men, but right now she feels past the point of caring. _ Victim shit _, Claire had said, back in another lifetime.

“Alright,” he says, his voice hardly more than breath. She crawls across the room, a few feet, and bumps into his knees. “Careful,” he says. She folds herself in beside him and leans her weight against the sturdy heat of his body. 

“I don’t want to die here,” she speaks into the dark. She lifts her right hand and cautiously rests it on his kneecap.

He shifts slightly with the touch but makes no protest. “I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t.”

“Why are they keeping us? Who are they?”

She feels his shoulders shrug. “I have no idea.”

“Where are the others?”

He swallows. “They won’t come. Not until they know we’re safe. Only the Beast could come but… he won’t.” 

Casey is not sure how long they sit together, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for they knew not what. Time passes strangely in the dark. It is only when she realizes she cannot ignore how much she needs to pee that she finally moves.

The prospect of peeing in the room is a mixture of shame and torment. She is sure it will be maddening to Dennis, although he will inevitably need to do the same. Casey gropes along the wall they’d been leaning against and feels no toilet. She turns in the corner and gropes along the second wall. It is only halfway along the third that she feels a cold steel toilet with no seat and a handlebar flush.

“Dennis,” she says, hardly audible in the grim silence. “I have to pee. I found a toilet.”

The silence that follows is thick enough to make Casey feel like she can’t breathe in it.

“Can you… plug your ears?”

“Sure,” he rasps.

She goes as quickly as she can. There is, blessedly, toilet paper on the ground to her left. She flushes, and then crouches on the ground, her face flaming. 

“How long do you think we’ve been here?” she asks.

She hears him release a long breath. “Maybe six or eight hours,” he says. “I’ve been trying to keep track.”

Six or eight hours. If he had told her three or four days, Casey would’ve believed him. She leans her head back against the wall. “Fuck,” she says.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Smut: the chicken noodle soup of the soul."  
\- Abraham Lincoln*

~*~

Dennis is trying to break open the door. Casey had felt the door with her hands, and it had seemed to be made of steel with a bolt latch. She doubted very much that he could do even the slightest damage to it but she supposed there was no harm in trying.

Dennis is groaning with effort. Casey hears his feet sliding against the tiles as he forces all of his weight into the door. 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she mutters, picking at her sleeves. 

She hears the thump of Dennis slamming his shoulder into the door again. 

“Maybe the Beast could open it.”

There is a sound of a slumping body. “No,” he says flatly.

Suddenly there is the sound of the seal of the door breaking, and Dennis scuffling backwards as it opens. The light is blinding; Casey covers her eyes with her hands. 

“Hello, friends,” somebody intones in a sing-song voice. “Here is some more food. Mr. Crumb, I suggest you eat this time around.”

“Who are you?” Casey gasps, trying to open her eyes. She can only see a blur of shadow and the bright light behind it. “What the fuck do you want with us?”

“A reminder of our rules,” the shadow continues, ignoring Casey’s interruption. “Same as we explained last time. Mr. Crumb, if you bring the Beast to the light without our permission, we will electrocute the girl immediately. Do you understand? There will be no warnings; as soon as we see it emerge, she will die. Are we clear?”

Casey sees the bleary shape of Dennis nodding mutely. 

“Excellent. Enjoy your meals.”

The door shuts with a hiss.

~*~

“You have to eat,” Casey murmurs in the dark.

She hears his labored breathing beside her. “I can’t,” he croaks. He sounds like he is in physical agony. “I can’t. Not with my fingers.”

“Then eat off of mine.”

“They’re dirty,” he whispers. He sounds almost pleading. 

“No,” Casey denies. “I’ve licked them clean.”

“Fuck,” he curses. His voice sounds muffled, like his hands are covering his face. “I…”

“It’ll be alright,” she soothes, scooping some of the slimy meat onto her fingers. “I’m saying you can. It’s the only way. I trust you.”

She holds her hand out in space for maybe three or four minutes, motionless, completely blind. She wonders if he will refuse. At last she feels something brush her fingertips, and then his hand circling her much smaller wrist. He guides her fingers to his mouth.

She feels the roughness of his beard first, and then the softness of his lips. Then his tongue, slick and unbearably hot. Casey is struck with a bolt of arousal and finds herself nearly panting as he licks the food off of her.

He leans back.

“More?” she whispers, hardly audible.

“Yes,” he breathes.

As she scoops more food into her hand she hears him shifting next to her, and she imagines that he is touching himself, just as excited as her. She has an overwhelming impulse to reach forward and see if he is hard, as she guesses he is. Somehow it seems safe in the dark and the closed room - no one can see her, and he can’t escape. 

Casey takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says. 

He licks the food off her fingers again. She is chewing her lips, starting to shiver. “You’re cold?” he asks. His voice sounds almost normal.

“No,” Casey says.

“Is this… bad? We can stop.”

“No,” says Casey again. “I want to touch you,” she adds.

“Please don’t,” Dennis replies instantly. “I… that would be wrong.”

Casey nods, forgetting he can’t see. She continues to feed him until the food is gone, and then cleans her own fingers, sucking them into her mouth. She can taste him -  _ fuck _ . 

They move instinctively to opposite sides of the room, as though they both realized at once the intimacy had become too much. Casey can hear him shifting restlessly, trying not to make noise as he breathes.

“You can touch yourself,” Casey says suddenly. “If you need to.” The silence is excruciating, and Casey scrunches her eyes closed, rubbing them with her fists. “I might need to,” she confesses. “I can’t stop thinking about your tongue on my fingers.”

Silence. Silence. She hears him shifting again.

  
Casey lays herself down on the cool tiles. When her fingers dip below her waistband and brush against her vulva, she is already slick and slippery to the touch. She wonders if he knows what she’s doing, just a few short feet away: if he can smell her, sense her somehow. She is sure the Beast would be able to. 

As Casey touches herself, she moans softly - only loud enough so that he can barely hear. She can hear his breaths, now sharp, panting. He is not moving at all that she can hear, but maybe the blood rushing in her ears is disguising the noise.

Casey rubs lightly at her clitoris. It is so sensitive with excitement that she can only bear a fleeting touch, so she presses two fingers inside herself; they slide in without resistance. There is a slick noise as she moves them, and Dennis make a soft choked sound across the room. 

“I’m thinking about what it would feel like to touch you,” Casey says. 

He swears quietly.

Casey rubs her clit again, her thighs tensing; the tightness in her belly is growing. Her orgasm is right there, warm and waiting, but Casey draws it out a little bit. She is imagining him stroking himself, maybe just through his pants - though he wouldn’t want to make a mess - so his hand would be on his cock, hardly moving for fear of making a sound. Rubbing a thumb, maybe, against the sensitive spot just below the head, the spot her uncle always --

Casey flinches, pulling her fingers out; her heart rate spikes; her body goes rigid.  _ Don’t,  _ she thinks frantically,  _ stop, stop, think of something else, anything else... _

It doesn’t work; it never does. Casey is held hostage by the memories as they sizzle in her mind, rancid and filthy, until she resorts to raking her fingernails up and down her thighs. She feels the flesh peeling away, and the pain is grounding, the pain is now - not in the september wilderness, not in the tent, not in the bedroom with a broken lock.

~*~

Dennis did  _ not  _ touch himself. He was disgusting enough with the film of sweat on his body and no means to get clean; he couldn’t bear to add sticky semen to the swill of bodily fluids he was enduring at present. It was a thin, perilous thing, resisting; it was probably - no, certainly - the most turned on he’d ever felt in his entire existence. God, the sounds she made…

But he wasn’t about to cum in his pants like some boy, and he couldn’t cum into the toilet without being egregiously obvious, though as he heard what could only be her fingers sliding in and out of her body he seriously considered it. Every little noise frayed at his willpower, made his horror at the filthiness seem less and less salient against the blistering arousal in his gut, the vividness of his mental image of her. She had stopped just in the nick of time - his fingers had been centimeters from the head of his weeping, aching cock; his legs had been tensed, ready to carry him to her - and gone completely silent. 

Dennis breathed slowly through his nose. 

They had to get the  _ fuck  _ out of here, and soon. The door had been completely impervious; this was no makeshift cell like the one he’d built beneath the zoo. This was something institutional. 

The Beast, of course, could break the door. He hears Patricia’s chiming voice deep within himself, reminding him that they must, above all else, escape. Barry murmurs supportively. The girl was important, of course, Barry soothed, but maybe the Beast could save her, maybe he really was that…

No. He would not doom her to a screaming death. There must be some other way. 

But what? Jade whined, her voice thready and thin in the depths of the waters. What way could there be? Clearly this was planned. There was no Mr. Glass to save them this time around; only the Beast, only the Beast…

Dennis thunked his head against the wall; the spike of pain bought him a few seconds of precious silence. 

The Beast, the Beast, the Beast. Their savior, or so the others all believed. Dennis was wiser. Dennis had sunk down into the train station, had come with whips and chains and done battle there in the abandoned cars. Tossed like a child’s toy; bent, wounded, but not broken. The Beast had laughed at him as it sat crouched in the shadow of its wings, claws scraping on the ground, but the laughter had died as it saw Dennis crawl back to his feet again. And again. And again. 

He knew he could not kill the Beast - he was not a fool. But he could exhaust him, could weaken him enough to be put down, down, into the deep black where no light reached at all, where the Beast would twist and spin in timeless silence, untouched, unable to touch. Where Dennis and Patricia had gone when Barry had teamed up with Dr. Fletcher. 

It was the only way to keep them from more gruesome destruction. It was Kevin’s last hope at a real life.

Dennis had succeeded - nearly. He had felt his strength failing as the Beast had slipped back in the inky dark of the deep; Dennis had felt an inward collapse that was terrifying and unfamiliar, and realized that he was dying, that he was being unmade. And then, with a thunderous roar, the ceiling of the old train station had cracked open, and a blinding light had poured through: the Beast had flown up on its leathery wings, and Dennis had scrambled after it.

He had come to Light and seen bodies laid down like so much meat, and then he had seen her, her beautiful face splashed with blood, a soldier pressing a gun between her shoulders. 

Dennis collapsed to his knees and begged them for her life.

~*~

“Why were you there?”

Three more meals have passed, and a fragile normalcy had settled on the prisoners. They had both faced the anguish of using the bathroom, the only time they were glad of the unremitting dark. The figure who brought the food had said nothing more other than restating The Rule to Dennis each time the door was opened. 

Casey is silent for a while. “I asked Joseph Dunn to track you down,” she says, her tone even.

Dennis clenches his teeth together against a swell of rage as he registers her words.  _ Traitor _ , hisses Patricia from the safety of inside,  _ little conniving cunt, just like I said…  _ “So you led them to us,” Dennis says, his voice calm.

“Yes,” he hears from across the cell. “It was stupid. Obviously. I understand if…” she trails off with a sigh. “I had to know if you were still killing people. But I didn’t want to get you captured again. That’s why I came alone - or so I thought, anyway.”

“That boy blames us for the death of his father,” Dennis points out. It is obvious that the kid would want them caught, and he doesn’t believe Casey wouldn’t see that.

“I know,” Casey says, and her voice sounds distorted. She must be pressing her face into her knees or elbow or hands. “I just thought… I thought I had convinced him to wait. I thought he believed me. And then I would find you, and see what you were up to, and we would escape together. That’s what I had imagined but I hadn’t thought it through, obviously.” A pause. “I am sorry.”

“Escape with  _ us _ ?” he asks, his voice rising with incredulity. The girl is quiet. “Why would you want that?” he presses.

“I can’t explain,” she says softly.

Dennis rubs his thumb and finger into his eyes, shaking his head. “The Beast wasn’t hurtin’ nobody. He hasn’t since the hospital.”

“Why did he stop?” asks the girl.

“He didn’t,” Dennis returns flippantly. “I’d been keeping him quiet. When you came, I was busy putting him down way below where he couldn’t get back up. I was tired of the killing. It wasn’t what I… it was never what I wanted. I’m not… I have my sins, sure, but I’m not that kind of man.” He breaks himself off, tense. He is afraid she will deny him: she will throw back in his face the obvious truth they both know, that he  _ is  _ that kind of man, that he was singularly responsible for her and her two friends winding up trapped with the Beast down below the zoo. 

She doesn’t. “I know you’re not,” she assures him with such plain conviction that Dennis feels his chest expand with an unbearable warmth.

He digs his fingers into his shoulder, kneading at the muscle to distract himself. “The Beast wants things he can’t have,” Dennis finishes. “So he has to be put away.”

He hears the girl moving and his body goes rigid. She is padding towards him, and Dennis fights the urge to lash out even as he stiffens in anticipation of some attack.

Her hands alight gently on his knees. Dennis hisses out a breath. “What kinds of things does he want?” Her voice is smoke thin, and he wishes desperately he could see her face. 

This close, her breath fans warm across his cheeks. Dennis leans back, gulping, his cock pulsing with blood. Doesn’t answer her. 

What can he say?  _ He wants you: to fuck you until you beg him to stop, and then until you are too weak to keep begging. To know what your cunt tastes like. To shred limb from limb any person who’s ever hurt you or scared you or, god forbid, desired you. He wants to know your every secret, your every inner thought; he wants to own every inch of your skin. He wants you to be his, utterly and completely, more consumed by him than any of the girls he’s killed and eaten.  _

“I can’t explain,” Dennis parrots her words back at her, his heart throbbing, his palms sweating. Casey’s thumbs rub excruciating circles against his knees; his eyes are round, wide, achingly open in the empty darkness. Dennis is beginning to regret not making himself cum earlier, damn the mess; he is becoming so tense and aroused he feels like his throat is closing up.

Down in the dim silence of inside himself, Dennis feels a low growl, and a crow-black eye cracks open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I formally apologize to the Lincoln estate. 
> 
> You may notice I am emphasizing Dennis' time in the light for this story. This is for two primary reasons: firstly, he was the main alter we saw in Split, and had the most depth and character growth of the alters over the course of the film (except, possibly, for Hedwig, but I maintain Dennis has a more complete arc). Due to this, I feel he has more relationship with Casey, more relationship with the audience, and more "substance" than many of the other alters, who seem comparatively one-note. 
> 
> Secondly, he was the first alter to emerge in Kevin's consciousness. Not being an expert or researcher on DID, it is nonetheless my instinct that this would give him more texture and dynamism as a personality than many of the more recent alters. In my own head canon, he is "closest" to Kevin and most intertwined and codependent: he is Kevin's "bad parts," and he takes Kevin's pain, leaving Kevin a kind and gentle but meek and ineffectual man. Dennis is not merely Kevin's rage personified, though. We see that Dennis operates under moral reasoning and experiences joy and humor as well as negative emotions. In my head canon, Dennis is, in some ways, more Kevin than Kevin is. Barry and other powerful alters like him (such as Hedwig or Patricia) are in my view more split off aspects of Kevin's experience or internalized others, whereas, for me, the Dennis-Kevin dyad is the essential tension of Kevin Crumb as a character.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meet a new alter, and a new friend.

~*~

Casey is starting to shiver. She has not heard a sound from Dennis in what she would guess was hours, though it was impossible to tell. It is  _ damn  _ cold; her nose is starting to drip. She whispers his name.

A quiet hum is her answer, and then: “Dennis is attending to other business.”

Casey feels her stomach twist anxiously. It is disorienting - everything about this cell was disorienting - but not knowing who was crouched in the blackness with her was especially disquieting. “Who are you?”

“I’m Samuel.”

Casey searches her mind for any memory of this alter: she thinks she remembers a note from Fletcher, something short and vague about  _ low tone, dissociative, emerges in times of helplessness or claustrophobia. _

“Hi Samuel,” she says. He hums again, a welcoming sound. “Is it just me, or is it getting… colder?” Even as she thinks about it, her teeth are starting to chatter.

She hears a shift and a quiet breath. “Yes. It’s probably twenty or twenty five degrees colder than when I came to the light.” His voice is so different from brassy, growling Dennis; this man sounds sleepy and soft, like he’s just woken up from a pleasant dream. 

She wraps her arms around herself. “Why?” she says, her voice shaking with her chills. “A malfunction? Have they forgotten about us? It makes no sense to freeze us to death.”

“I doubt that’s their intention,” Samuel says vaguely. A pause. “You can come over here, if you like.”

Casey obeys haltingly. Her fingers are numbing against the cold tiles. She finds him wedged into a corner, legs braced apart. “You don’t mind?” she asks in a small voice.

“No,” he answers, unconcerned. 

He is blessedly, deliciously warm. Casey curls into a ball, her back against his chest, his legs bracketing her legs. She tucks her head beneath his chin and he tightens around her, pressing her from all sides, and starts slowly rubbing her arms where goosepimples prickle up and down them. 

Casey cannot recall a time where she was held like this. She is sure it must have happened when she was a baby, before her mother died, and she guesses her father held her this way too, when she was small. But the memories are elusive, fragmented; the feel of his shirt under her cheek, the smell of his cologne. The sensation of Kevin’s - Samuel’s - broad chest at her back, of his arms around her, heavy and strong, is foreign. She lets her legs fall open so they are leaning against his legs. 

She wonders if Samuel knows about her, or if she is as strange to him as he is to her. 

“Why do you think they’ve made it so cold?” she asks him softly.

His arms tighten around her body; she yields further backwards, unspooling into him. “I think they want us to get close,” he murmurs. His voice is more sensation than sound, a gentle vibration at her shoulder blades. 

Casey rests her head against his shoulder, her nose falling against the hot skin of his neck. He smells somehow different from Dennis; more muted, the edge of that salty masculinity worn off. Samuel smells like warm blankets, like a cool pillow on a summer night. As she speaks, Casey’s lips brush his skin, and he hums again, that soft, reassuring sound. “I’m sleepy,” she says.

He curls up a final amount, cocooning her with his body. “So sleep,” he answers.

~*~

Time passes: long, long hours and days. Interminable and shapeless in the cold dark. The only real things in the world are the ungiving steel beneath Casey’s palms, and the feel of Kevin’s body, soft, strong, warm. 

Casey wonders about Stuart - had he called the police? Is there a desperate search for her underway? Does Joseph Dunn weep with remorse as he searches every unlikely corner of the world? A part of her hopes not, hopes they both just let her go like smoke in the wind; they knew she was not a constant in either of their lives. But a part of her dreads the idea that world outside had forgotten her. What if she is so easily erased?

What if the only person alive who really cares for her is sleeping curled like a cat a few feet away, just as trapped as she?   
  


For so long, Casey had not dreamed of a life; she had dreamed only of escape, and revenge. In the basement beneath the zoo, she had thought only of avoiding a gruesome death. Now she thinks longingly of saving her imagined future.

What would that future look like? It’s a question she struggles to form. Married? With children? She isn’t so sure. Working, yes, but no more school; she hates school. She is smart, though. She could make something of herself.

With him? The thought - just holding the possibility in her mind - brings a flush to her cheeks. What would their life be, on the lam, forever running from shadows? Sleeping curled under street lamps? Lean and hungry and vigilant, but she imagines the closeness it would bring, she imagines the intimacy of knowing his face - his many faces - how maybe his eyes slant with tiredness as the day drags, or perhaps how he can’t stand the taste of tomatoes. How he would stroke her cheek, seeing her sadness. How his fingers would brush against her fingers as they kissed. 

She has never felt like she’s known anyone the way she knows him.

She hears him sigh in his sleep, and wonders if he is dreaming. Asleep, he is not any of the alters; he is not entirely Kevin, either. He is some blurry landscape of them all, a sum that is more than its parts. 

Casey decides she will crawl over and wake him just as the door opens.

“My friends!” 

She flinches away from the blinding, blistering light, hands over her eyes. She hears footsteps echoing heavily against the tile floor as the shadow-figure steps into the room. 

“How are you both? My little birdies tell me you’ve been very good! Keeping warm, they told me; nothing brings two people together like a bit of an extenuating circumstance, eh? Come now - time to open your eyes - it’ll take some time to get used to the light, but you’ll get back to normal soon, I promise. No more sitting in the dark! I’m very excited to get to know you both! Let’s see - who shall I start with? Ms. Cooke? You are a little more, shall I say, straightforward a subject - oh! - this must be Dennis, the fierce protector! Hello! Easy, easy, big fella; don’t get your knickers in a twist. Have it your way: I’ll start with you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love, love, love all your thoughtful and encouraging comments! Thank you to those of you who have taken the time to leave me with your thoughts and feelings after each chapter. 
> 
> This short chapter is transitioning us out of the dark, and into another adventure for our intrepid duo.


	9. Chapter 9

The first lash upon the soul of Kevin Crumb was not struck by his mother. Kevin doesn’t remember - the memory lives in Dennis, his first purpose. Dennis was born of blood, pressed into the world in an agony of flesh and feeling. 

He awakes, older than his three years, in his grandmother’s lap. 

“Nana?” He sits up slowly. The world is moving strangely, distantly, and he watches his hands moving like twisting birds, all red and oily. There is a ringing in his ears. 

_ Who am I? _

Grandmother is laying on the floor. Her eyes are open, but she is not looking at him. Her skin is cold and waxy to the touch. There is a pulpy mess by her head, and red blood thickening into a puddle that circles her hair like a halo. “Nana,” says the Other Boy. 

Perhaps he should give her some water.

The glass slips from his fingers; they are too slick with the blood from grandmother’s smashed head. Grandmother makes no reaction to the noise. She wouldn’t have punished him, not really, but usually she would have sat up, have fussed and told him not to get near the glass. She would have smoothed her leathery palms over his cheeks and inspected each of his fingers for small splinters. She would have said,  _ go on then, let nana clean this up before you cut yourself to ribbons _ , and he would’ve smiled, and she would’ve looked at him with the glowing, mischievous warmth that made his soul bloom like wildflowers. 

Kevin doesn’t remember this; it wasn’t him. Grandmother had been coming around the corner because the phone was ringing. She hadn’t seen him, and then she did, but she was old and she wasn’t so steady on her feet these days - she always said so. She tripped over his pale ankle and she hit the corner of the tile counter - look, you can see it, the tacky blood, the bit of skull, the clump of her white hair - and then fell to the kitchen floor. Her body had twitched; she had moaned and made strange faces.

It wasn’t Kevin’s fault. He wasn’t there.

It was the Other Boy.

~*~

Time passes differently when he is inside: years collapsed to hours; minutes stretched into months. It is the weight of the work that determines the stretch of time; there is no sun and moon here, no stars to track. The only measurement is of feeling: the richness of their joy, the textures of their many hurts. 

Dennis lays curled on the floor of an empty train car. His body is damaged: the skin of his arms stripped ribbon-like off his muscle, bones cracked and ground down to mulch, his hard expressionless face battered and bruised. The Beast had not been easy. 

But his heart remains untouched, a glowing soft light in his middle: there are four deep gashes in his chest where the Beast had clawed for it, hungry, his fangs dripping with white foam, but somehow it always slipped away from his grip. 

Dennis is surprised, but he supposes he shouldn’t be. He has always held the heart of them all, and it is something precious and strong that no other could touch.

The Beast prowls thoughtfully at Dennis’ feet. The long wings bend over them both, smoke and shadow, and Dennis feels the black eyes resting against his body, coal-hot.  _ “We could have her _ ,” the Beast rumbles, his voice grinding like stones, “ _ we could eat her heart. _ ” The monster approaches Dennis, nudges its snout against one of Dennis’ limp arms. “ _ We would be stronger than we’ve ever been. We would be invincible. _ ”

“We would be weak,” Dennis says. Blood bubbles out of his mouth, streaking down his cheek - disgusting. 

The Beast hovers briefly over Dennis. The horrible face peers down at him without understanding, the liquid dark of its eyes moving thoughtfully over Dennis’ ravished body. “ _ You would die to spare her? _ ”

“Yes,” Dennis says.

The Beast extends forward one great fist, claws outstretched, and lifts Dennis lollingly to his feet. “ _ You deserve death for your defiance. But Kevin needs you. And Kevin needs the girl. _ ”

“I will never let you have her,” Dennis spits, watching with grim satisfaction as his blood speckles the Beast’s hideous face. Dennis staggers one step and collapses to his knees. “I wish you had never been born! You are a - an abomination!”

“ _ I have made Kevin stronger than you ever could. _ ”

“You’ve destroyed all that Kevin loves!” Dennis howls, struggling up onto his hands and knees. He cranes his neck to look up at the creature, his vision swimming. “You killed those innocent kids, you killed the doctor! She loved us and you killed her! You ruined our life!”

The Beast crouches low, gazing wonderingly at the angry little man before it. “ _ Yes. It is true. We have always consumed those we loved: it is Kevin’s oldest story. You and I are the same. It was not I who wrote the first page of this, was it? It was not I who killed the old woman that loved us. _ ”

Dennis roars, lunging forward; his hands, possessed with an unnatural strength, grasp the black feathers growing around the Beast’s snarling face. His nails peel at the Beast’s leathery hide. “Not again! Not again! I will kill us both, and the girl will live, and Kevin will be free of this curse!”

The Beast grins, skull-like and awful. “ _ I cannot die, and neither can you. Don’t you hear her calling for you? Go to her: I will not follow. My time with the girl has not yet come. _ ”

It is true; Dennis feels the ache of her voice, pulling inward, a delicious queasiness. The glow of his heart pulses and blooms and pulls him up, up, up into the light.

~*~

He is weak even in the light, feeling the phantom pains of his shredded body. Casey is tense beside him, paralyzed with fear. The man in the doorway stands, a laughing shadow, calling for him to come along.

“I won’t leave her here,” Dennis snaps, and he stiffens with a boiling humiliation as his voice cracks weakly over the last word. 

The man sighs amusedly. “Alright, fine. But if she’s to come she must be held at gunpoint: insurance, you see.”

Dennis shakes his head slowly. “The Beast won’t come. There’s no need for that kind of shit.”

The man, his face still hidden by the backlight, pauses thoughtfully. “If not a gun, then carry her out.”

Dennis winces. He isn’t sure if he can manage that; his legs are trembling with the mere effort of standing. But he has faced more impossible tasks before. “Alright,” he says, and glances down at Casey.

She gives a minute nod, standing slowly. Rests her hands on his shoulders and gives him an intrepid, expectant look.

If he were less destroyed, Dennis is sure he would be a riot of conflicted feelings; as it is, he only scoops her up with a grim determination, willing the splitting agony in his arms to recede. She is not heavy. His body, pleased with her closeness, seems to forget its wounds. 

She winds one arm around his neck to sit up as he carries her bridal-style out of the cell, the man a few strides ahead of them, glancing continuously back. Casey’s fingers flutter against the base of his neck in some unconscious gesture of anxiety, and the feeling ripples down his spine. 

The man leads them through narrow hallways, dimly lit. He turns and opens a door, motioning them through. Dennis carries Casey in, careful not to bump her against the doorframe.

The room is very large - as Dennis had begun to suspect, they were in some kind of abandoned industrial complex. The floor is cement, the walls brick, the ceiling high and lined with old piping. In the middle of the room there is a large oak table and at the table there is Joseph Dunn.

The boy looks up at Dennis. Dennis can’t decipher his expression, but it is nothing friendly; as the boy turns his gaze to the girl, he visibly softens. 

“She’s hurt?” he asks urgently, standing.

The man who’d led them in crosses the room, shaking his head. “No. I figure if he’s holding her when he transforms that will buy us time to escape.”

Joseph glances sidelong at the man, looking unconvinced. 

Casey, silent and still through this exchange, leaps down from Dennis and stands facing Joseph like she is bracing for a fight. Dennis feels himself tensing reflexively, ready to defend her. “Joseph,” she says softly.

The boy looks up, his pale eyes soft and shimmering. “Casey…”

“Joseph,” she repeats, “what  _ fuck  _ are you doing here?”

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joseph's got some 'splaining to do!
> 
> So, I've created something total outside of canon with Kevin's grandmother. For the purposes of developing his character, I thought it was important that Kevin had experienced love and tenderness in his very early life; I don't think it's realistic that he could feel love in any of his identities as an adult if he had never experienced it in early childhood. And I don't see how a father who knows his son is being tortured and doesn't remove him is a loving father, regardless of their fantasy that his father would have rescued him had he lived. So my headcanon is that Kevin's paternal grandmother cared for Kevin until he was three; she died in a grisly manner, the trauma of which birthed Dennis, and from there Kevin's mother was responsible for his care, leading to escalating abuse. Dennis and the Beast are the only two identities who remember the grandmother; they are the strongest identities and the closest to Kevin's raw emotional core.


	10. Chapter 10

~*~

The rage of seeing Joseph there, complicit and regretful, drums against Casey’s ribcage like a second heart. She doesn’t let it show on her face as she pulls a chair and sits in front of him. “Explain,” she says.

Joseph is swallowing, looking nervously between the man, Kevin and herself like he isn’t sure who to fear the most. “I had no idea they’d hold you captive like this,” he begins, and breaks off, pressing his head into his hands. “Jesus. It’s all so fucked up. My father…” he trails off. “He would be horrified,” he finishes softly. He looks up again, steeling his jaw and avoiding Casey’s eyes. “This is an organization. A… a militia, if you will. You remember I said that we had to find the Beast, stop him.”

Casey nods.

“Well, that wasn’t… all. I’ve been researching the organization that killed dad. It was hard, really hard to find anything… they are at the absolute top levels. Super secret stuff. I found their name - Clover Street Society - but almost nothing else. Nothing like hacking police databases, or even FBI. This is next level.” Joseph stiffens suddenly, and Casey turns to see that Dennis is walking slowly forward. She pulls out the chair next to her and Dennis folds himself into it gingerly, first sweeping the seat with his hand. He moves awkwardly, like he’s injured. Casey narrows her eyes but returns her attention to Joseph.

“But you did find something,” she prompts.

Joseph nods, rubbing his fingers anxiously against his mouth. “I did,” he murmurs. “I did. I found these guys.” 

At this cue, the man strides forward and sits across from the three of them with a flourish. He is a tall, reedy fellow with pale eyes that always seem to be laughing and a shock of hair so blonde it looked white. “And that would be me!” he calls, gratingly cheerful. Casey glances at Dennis, who is staring at the man with a face like iron. “My name is Callum. And we are an organization dedicated to destroying the bastards that killed Joseph’s father and tried to kill you,” the man explains, pointing to Dennis.

“By kidnapping us,” Dennis replies flippantly.

The man shrugs. “Would you have come willingly? And besides, we wanted to see if the Beast could be controlled by you. We figured the girl was the key - and we were right! She can control you and you can control the Beast.”

Casey is sure Dennis will angrily object, but he only stares, his expression flat and colorless. His eyes are deadened. It makes Casey shiver. 

“Control him for what reason? Why do you need Kevin?” Casey asks. She is knotting and unknotting her fingers; her stomach is twisting with anxiety. This all feels surreal, and she is half-convinced they will attack them both at any moment. 

She is fully convinced that there is something  _ wrong  _ with Dennis. 

The man - Callum - grins at her. “The one million dollar question! There is a reason we are all so dedicated to destroying the Clover Street Society, you know. And there is a reason we even know they exist. And that reason is that we - all of us - have ourselves been hunted by them, or somebody we love has been.”

Dennis face flickers, his mouth pressing into a troubled frown. “You mean you have… abilities? Like the Beast?”

Callum tilts down his chin, smiling coyly at Dennis as he spreads his palms across the table top. “Pre-cise-ly, my friend. Not necessarily as extraordinary as yours, perhaps, but abilities nonetheless. And through our combined talents, we are a formidable force.”

Casey digests this in silence. So this was what… recruitment? They wanted the Beast as another foot soldier in their vendetta against these so-called Clover Street people? And she was only a pawn: a damsel to pull forward the Beast’s gentler sensibilities. Like King Kong and Mia Farrow.

Casey feels a sudden wave of exhaustion. She has been used by men all her life - there is nothing particularly novel about that - but inside of her she feels pulled apart, as though her soul is halved and each portion is moving in opposite directions. She longs for normalcy, for gentle Stuart and the soft life they had been building. Stuart had not known all of her, had not witnessed her ugliness or her terror or accepted her rage as Kevin had, but he had never hurt her, had never tried to kill her or consume her, and would never put her in harm’s way. 

Beside her, Dennis straightens his posture until Casey realizes it’s actually Patricia. “And whyever should we trust you, Callum?” she asks. A reasonable question. “We demand some proof of your claims. And even so, the Beast has higher aims than petty revenge.”

“Does he still?” Callum asks, a shallow delight in his pale eyes. “Or have his priorities…” Callum’s gaze shifts to Casey, moving lasciviously over her body in a way that makes her shrivel, “... changed?”

Patricia sniffs in a perfect expression of disgust. “Our personal relationships are  _ none _ of your concern.”

“It’s more than petty revenge.” All three turn to Joseph, who studies his hands and slowly shakes his head. “This organization is evil. It’s been hunting people down and destroying them just because they’re special - because they have something other people don’t. It needs to be stopped.” He looks up at Casey, and his expression holds such aching sincerity that she feels her anger with him bleed away. “It’s what my father would’ve wanted.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe,” she says. “But what does any of this have to do with me? So okay, you’ve got the Beast under control. Now what purpose do I serve?”

“None!” Callum announces cheerfully, fanning out his fingers. “You, my friend, are free to go. We thank you for your patience with our unusual methods, and assume you will keep all this in utmost secrecy - otherwise you would be putting all of us in critical danger.”

“The girl will not remain?” It’s Patricia, sounding curious and a little wary. 

Callum shrugs. “No need for her. The Beast knows the plan now, and you’ve got control of him, so what’s the point? She can return to her normal little life babysitting and making out with her greasy boyfriend.”

“ _ Fuck  _ you!” snarls Casey, launching to her feet. The man laughs at her, and Joseph sets a hand on her arm.

To her right, Patricia stiffens, grimacing. “The hell is goin’ on?”

Casey looks at Dennis. He appears even more pale and drawn - ill, if she didn’t know better. Callum turns his grin on Dennis. “You’ll be relieved to hear we’re sending Casey home,” he explains calmly.

Dennis’ brows bend down into an anxious frown. “What? What do you mean?”

“I have no use in an army,” Casey says tiredly. “All they want is you, Dennis. And the Beast.”   
  


“Who gives a fuck what  _ they  _ want?” Dennis is looking at her like she’s grown two heads. “The Beast could fucking shred this guy - for that matter,” Dennis shoots him a contemptuous glance, “I could shred this guy. We don’t gotta be a part of no bullshit army.” Dennis fixes Casey with a stare, hard and fierce and somehow so tender that she feels like the heat of it will set her alight. “You don’t gotta do anything you don’t want to anymore.”

The three men sit, silent, all eyes on her. Joseph is nervously chewing his lip, studying her with that sincerity that always led her to trust in him. Even irreverent Callum appears sobered, sitting back in his chair, hands on his chin. Casey rubs at her eyes. “I want… I want somewhere to rest,” she says, finally. Her thoughts are racing, tripping over each other. She just needs a chance to  _ think _ . “With… with you.” Casey points at Dennis without looking at him. “And  _ not  _ a cell.”

“There’s a room a few doors down the hallway for people working long shifts.” Callum’s brows bounce humorously up his forehead. “Small bed, but I’m sure you’ll manage.”

Casey stands immediately, noticing and choosing to ignore the flaming blush on Dennis’ cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter of some plotty-plot plotting. Thank you, as ever, for your readership and your lovely comments! Please let me know anywhere you guys want me to expand or explore further in the coming chapters. This is all still bubbling around in my head so I love getting suggestions. 
> 
> Next up is Casey & Dennis Alone in a Small Room: The Sequel, featuring a mattress and a lamp!


	11. Chapter 11

Casey sees that Dennis is going to give up the light as soon as the door starts to close to the small room. It has a single cot, narrow enough that the two of them would have to fold together like a pair of socks in order to fit. Against the wall, there is a small dresser, a desk with a lamp and a chair. Casey notices a second door. 

Casey touches Dennis’ shoulder. “Can you stay in the light? Just for a while longer?”

He looks at her in exhausted confusion. “You think we’re not safe?”

She shakes her head, leaning across him to deadbolt the door. “It’s not that. I just… I don’t know. I want to talk with you, I guess.”

Casey wonders when this shift happened: when cold, predatory Dennis became the most familiar to her of them all. There was something dependable about him, and moreover there was something alive in him - after meeting Kevin, Dennis’ eyes reminded her the most of his. Not as kind, certainly, but just as full of feeling. He seemed to think and listen in a way that the others didn’t. She felt like she could understand him. 

All this is too much to explain. “It’s okay if you’re too weak and you need to go rest.” She isn’t meaning to be manipulative, but Casey does turn so he can’t see her small smile.

“Not sick,” he replies grumpily, half-collapsing in the chair. “Just tired. I can stay.”

Casey crosses the small room and opens the second door. Inside is a bathroom with a toilet and a shower.

She turns slowly to Dennis.

His eyes have widened fractionally, an expression of such hunger on his face that she steps back from the door lest she be stampeded in his pursuit. “Go nuts,” she says with a laugh.

He doesn’t need asking twice. While he doubtless scrubs every inch of his body - not a thought she will dwell on - Casey opens the dresser and sees a few pairs of men’s shirts, underwear and jeans that look approximately Kevin’s size. The pants won’t fit her but she can at least change her shirt and wash her underwear in the sink. 

Dennis showers for close to an hour. Casey lounges on the bed, trying to order her thoughts. She doesn’t feel ready to contemplate all this insane superhero militia bullshit, so instead she thinks about contacting Stuart - but that is itself a quagmire that leaves her feeling nauseous. So Casey closes her eyes and tries not to think at all. When the water turns off, Casey raps on the door and informs Dennis there’s clean clothes he can wear. He cracks the door and she hands them through, and he emerges twenty minutes later wearing jeans that are a little too tight and a black t-shirt that hugs the breadth of his shoulders.

Casey swallows. “My turn,” she says, slipping past him. 

The shower is divine. She feels the grime of the last few days melting off her, and with it all the rage and terror and confusion. She rubs the bar of soap over herself, under her arms and breasts, between her legs. She thinks fleetingly of touching herself but she’s too exhausted, so she leans against the cool tiles and lets the water drum against her, an ancient and unerring rhythm. After she steps out, she sees a toothbrush and toothpaste on the sink counter that Dennis had clearly scavenged from the medicine cabinet. She cleans her teeth gratefully. 

When she comes back out, she sees Dennis sitting in the chair with a hand on each knee, breathing heavily. At first she thinks its her time in the shower that’s got him going, but she realizes immediately that his face is almost white, his eyes dull and unfocused.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, kneeling next to him.

He shakes his head. “Up here,” he says, waving vaguely at his head. “Just… internal politics.”

She presses a hand to the back of his neck and he leans slightly into her like a pleased cat. “Does that help? Being touched?” He doesn’t answer - she figured he wouldn’t. “Come to the bed. Let’s lay down.”

Dennis has enough strength left to look intensely alarmed, but she tugs at him and he doesn’t resist. 

Together on the bed, they twine together easily enough, her leg slotted between his, her face tucked into the space beneath his chin. Dennis is limp and docile, very unlike him, but when he winds his arms around her middle she still reflects that this must be how Kevin feels, safe and tucked away as the others hold him.

~*~

Barry comes to awareness by degrees. The first thing he notices is that he is somewhere comfortable and unfamiliar. Then he smells her - and how does he even know her scent? - and feels her body, soft and warm under his body.

He feels the arousal move liquidly through him, a tongue of flame. 

Her thigh is wedged into his groin - problematic. He feels her hot breath on his throat. He tries to think of things to distract himself, namely what the fuck they were doing in this tiny room.

Dennis had been making regular reports, so Barry knew the long and the short of their ordeal, but he still found it all bizarre and very unsettling. He doesn’t trust Joseph or that man one whit, sees no reason to believe their crazy story of some superhero squad fighting the evil government. And how had they found him and Casey? Who else was in on it? How long had they been spied upon? There were too many questions to even begin to make sense of the situation. 

Casey shifts slightly in her sleep, her thigh pressing against his half-hard cock. This movement pops the bubble of Barry’s focus, and his attention is zeroed back in on the beautiful woman sprawled against him.

“I know you’re awake.”

The sound of her voice makes Barry jump, and she laughs noiselessly into his neck. He shivers. 

“Who are you?” she asks, nosing against his skin.

“Barry,” he rasps. His hands are moving up and down her back, reflexive, rhythmic. He pulls his hips slightly backwards so she can’t feel how hard he’s getting. She moves again, sliding her leg down so her hips are pressed into his lower stomach. Barry presses the flat of his palm into her lower back, pushing her in, working hard not to thrust against her. “How long have you been awake?”

“An hour or two,” she answers. 

He feels her teeth grazing lightly at his shoulder. “How have you been making use of your time, I wonder,” he says, a little breathless. He is trying to think quickly of what sex with women is like - he’s had it before, long ago, but Barry is typically much more attracted to men. Casey, of course, is the exception to all their rules. 

Foreplay, he thinks. Women like foreplay.

He lets his hand brush the side of her breast as though by accident. She’s wearing a t shirt like his, but its loose on her, thin and soft. He counts her ribs with his fingertips, reaches the hem of her shirt and swipes his thumb against her bare skin. He feels the hard edge of her hip bone, presses his thumb into the give just above her pelvis. She arches up into him and he lets his hips tilt forward just enough that she can feel his erection as she presses into him. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Casey says. One of her hands is splayed against his chest, and the other slides up the back of his neck, scratching lightly at his scalp. He feels her hot mouth pressing kisses to his collarbone, and it makes his skin boil with desire. “This whole thing with Joseph and Callum seems kind of shady.”

“I agree,” says Barry. He ducks his head into her neck, brushing back her sweet-smelling hair. He licks a stripe from her shoulder to her ear, sucks her earlobe lightly into his mouth. She shivers, clenching her hand against his scalp, and goes completely still.

_ Slow - don’t rush her.  _ The voice is not Barry’s. Barry is a little disgusted to think of Dennis hovering in the back and giving him pointers - what the hell does that loser know about sex anyway? - but he recognizes immediately that Dennis has read it right, so Barry rolls onto his back and takes a moment to collect himself.

Casey follows a beat later, running her hands over his torso. The feeling of being touched with such desire is electrifying; Barry tilts back his head, exultant. He keeps his hands folded over his stomach, giving her a moment to get acquainted with his body, to touch without being touched. 

Barry wonders briefly why Dennis isn’t vying for the light - he was very much attracted to women, and very much attracted to this woman in particular - but Dennis is a soft presence at the edges of Barry, uncharacteristically slow and heavy. 

Casey’s hand roams down to the waistband on Barry’s jeans. His abdomen tenses, involuntary, and Barry feels like he is breathing too loudly but can’t seem to help it. He raises one hand and combs his fingers through her dark hair. Her fingers fold under his waistband, resting there without moving. She is only an inch away from the head of his aching cock, maybe less, and Barry quashes a wild impulse to push her hand lower. 

“We could just leave here,” Casey says.

“We could,” replies Barry. “Do you think they’d come after us?”

Casey shrugs, her thumb rubbing at the hairs clustered below his navel. “The Beast could protect us.”

Barry feels a sharp lurch inside, like he was on a rollercoaster that had just dropped down the highest peak. Like something deep within had done a backflip. Barry doesn’t wonder who that was. “I don’t know,” he says, distracted, feeling anxiety beginning to pull at the edges of him. He isn’t like Dennis - he will lose the light if he becomes afraid.

Casey appears over Barry’s head, hovering on one elbow, her beautiful dark eyes very serious in the dim light of the room. Her hair tumbles down over her shoulders like black waters. “Can I kiss you?” she asks.

Barry nods, swallowing. “Of course, honey,” he answers. His voice creaks embarrassingly, but Casey doesn’t seem to notice as she dips her head and seals her mouth against his.

Her lips are a little dry and very warm, softer than he’d expected. They kiss lightly for a few seconds, lips to lips. It’s different from other times Barry has done this, but then everything about this experience is different - he’s never felt so nervous, he’s never felt like sex has mattered this much, he’s never felt so much like he wants to  _ be inside  _ somebody in such a physical and emotional sense. He wonders if Dennis is bleeding into him, and then wonders if it is somebody else bleeding into Dennis - they’re all getting tangled up and blurred together with this girl. 

Casey parts her mouth, and touches her tongue to his lips. The heat and wetness of it makes Barry’s cock pulse with blood, but he moves slowly, cupping one hand at the back of her head and opening his mouth. 

The kiss builds gradually, with small pauses. Casey stays above him and sets the pace, her fingers stroking his cheek and eyelids and exploring the shapes of his ears. Everywhere she touches him, Barry feels himself blazing with heat. His heart slams in his chest. She breaks off the kiss eventually and nibbles at the angle of his jaw. The tension is building in Barry's muscles, a honeyed wanting that is making his heart gallop against his ribs. He imagines what it would feel like to sink inside her: hot and wet and _so_ tight. He moves his hips a little, restless, and slips one hand down to squeeze at his cock. 

_ Don’t,  _ snaps Dennis, and Barry jerks his hand away as though burned.

“It’s okay,” Casey says, smiling into the skin beneath his jaw. “Would you rather I did that?”

“Uh,” answers Barry, flustered past words. Casey’s smile widens.

There is a knock at the door.

She sits up slowly, blinking. Barry can see her face now: her cheeks reddened, her mouth swollen with his kisses. It makes his throat ache with some feeling he can’t name. “I’ll check,” she says, looking at him apologetically. He nods.

She opens the door and he hears Joseph’s voice, soft and pleading. She is looking back and forth between Barry and Joseph, and Barry tries not to listen, focused instead on getting his wild hormones back under control.

“--step out for a minute and talk? Alone?”

Inwardly, Dennis gives a roar of furious protest that sends a splinter of pain through Barry’s temples. He winces.  _ No!  _ rages Dennis,  _ no, no, don’t let her leave alone!  _

_ You’re crazy,  _ Barry chastises.  _ She’s a grown woman. And anyway they’re friends.  _

_ It’s not safe - don’t let her -  _

_ Don’t.  _

It is a third voice, older and deeper, and Barry senses a shadow, senses black eyes looming overhead. He begins to feel very dizzy.  _ Who is that? _

_ The girl remains with us,  _ the shadow answers.

Barry feels Dennis: a flame against the shadow that grows until it is a blazing fire. Barry sits up abruptly, shaking his head. 

“Are you okay?” It’s Casey.

Barry nods. “Just a headache. You’re going with Joseph?”

Casey frowns a little, glancing back at Joseph. “Just for a minute. Just to talk.”

“Okay,” says Barry. Casey turns to leave. “Wait! Just - in the hallway, okay? I won’t listen. Just don’t go far. Um - Dennis gets worried.”

Casey, surprising as ever, smiles. “Sure,” she says, and closes the door. 

~*~

Barry tries to ignore whatever conflict is brewing within their body. He rises instead and inspects the small room, opening and closing drawers, looking into the bathroom. His cock is still aching, so, sending up a silent prayer that Casey won’t be back for a few more minutes, he turns on the shower.

Barry grips his cock with grateful anticipation, curling his toes against the bolt of pleasure that shoots down his spine. His thoughts race, tripping over themselves: he thinks of the softness of her skin, the smell of her still faint in his nose, the taste of her tongue as it licked along his tongue. He imagines what it would feel like to push inside her tight, wet pussy, how she would arch wantonly for him, her breasts bouncing, her nipples tightening in the cold air...he is cumming with a grimace, one hand braced against the slippery tiles of the shower stall, ropes of semen splashing the wall in front of him. The relief is immediate and astounding, and Barry realizes they haven’t gotten off in way too long for this high-strung body. Barry notices that Dennis and the Shadow seemed quieted too, and almost laughs at the absurdity of it.

Casey is still gone. Barry redresses and leans out the doorway, spotting the two of them deep in some tense conversation. Casey catches his eye and nods slightly, and Barry retreats back to the room.

He stretches out on the cot, thinking. 

As far as he’s concerned, there is no reason whatsoever to join some vigilante group of conspiracy wackos. Besides, they’d been spying on the System for what sounds like a while, and fucking  _ kidnapped  _ them. And who even were those soldiers? 

Barry’s vote was certainly a strategic exit.

To where? The eternal question. What next? Drifting, he supposed. Continue their shapeless life, living moment to moment, passing the light from self to self to self. Staying alive, like they’d always done. 

Barry finds the thought unexpectedly troubling.

There was something strange about the last few days, trapped in the darkness - it had felt, even inside and away from the light, like the whole System had jolted awake. As though they had been half-sleeping for a long, long time - since the hospital, or even before, since the Beast had come and ravished those poor people. It had all been too much, and they had each of them become somehow less than themselves, only actors, stereotypes, carrying out their assigned roles without feeling. But just now with Casey underneath him and on top of him and kissing him, Barry had felt electrically, wonderfully awake - alive - resuscitated. 

Barry thinks he is starting to understand why Dennis loves her so much. 

What would it mean, to part with her? More of that dreamless sleep? Things would be simpler, of course, on their own; they could root her out like a weed, and they would surely be freer - and yet, Barry feared, somehow lesser. 

And Barry wondered if was even possible to leave her, or to let her leave. He could feel the Shadow inside, strong and uneasy, the crow-black eyes that watched and never wearied. Dennis was at the edge of his endurance.

Barry decides it will be better for everyone if Casey stays.

~*~

Joseph is speaking with that kind of earnest pleading that Casey finds suffocating. She knows he is hungry for her understanding and forgiveness, but she is just so tired - tired of being lied to and tricked, tired of being looked to for compassion and absolution. What does it matter to him what she thinks, anyways? 

“We have to stop the Clover Society,” Joseph continues urgently, gesticulating in sharp little gestures that make Casey step backwards. “My research showed just how extensive they are. How many people they’ve killed. It’s  _ wrong _ , Casey. It’s so wrong. And this group - I know they’re a little unorthodox, but they’re doing what they can. They’re trying to stop those  _ fuckers _ .” 

There is a feverishness in Joseph’s eyes that is making Casey uneasy. “Just how many of these people have you met, anyways? And what kind of abilities do they have?”

“I’ve met a few dozen,” replies Joseph, warming to the topic. “And Casey, they can do all kinds of things. There’s one woman who never needs to sleep - she’s never slept a minute in her life. Another woman who can heal from wounds in hours, and feels no pain. Ever. A guy who can hold his breath for a day. It’s incredible, it really is.” Joseph shakes his head, raking his fingers through his hair. He is breathing heavy, sweat stains under his arms. It looks like he himself hasn’t slept in a week. “And just think how many more there might be if the Clover Society hadn’t been hushing it up and murdering these people for so many years! This could just be the tip of the iceberg, Casey. The human species may be something more than we ever dreamed.”

Casey takes a slow breath. She feels like everything is happening around her too fast, and she can’t handle more of Joseph’s fanaticism at the moment. “Can we… can we think about it?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest tightly. “I mean, are we allowed to leave?”

Joseph watches her intently, seeming, for the first time today, as though he’s really  _ seeing  _ her. “We?” he echoes softly. “So you are with him, then?”

Casey swallows. She feels her blood pounding in her ears, backs up one more step until her back hits the wall. “I…” She doesn’t know what to say. Her thoughts are getting hazy, disjointed; she feels like her focus is slipping, like Joseph is somehow distant, his small eyes staring at her from somewhere far away. 

“Casey,” he says, and Joseph’s voice sounds muddied and strange. “I know you have a sort of connection to him… but he’s dangerous. The Beast is dangerous. He murdered dozens of girls, ate them alive, Casey. How can you be with him, knowing that?”

_ How? How?  _ It was a good question: a question she tried never to ask. Casey felt a needle sharp pain between her eyes, her vision blurring. The world was slipping away - or more accurately Casey was slipping away from the world…

She remembered his face, looming, the bristle of his beard, the smell of skin. Musty, sour.  _ Why are you like this, Casey? Why do you get so wet for me? _

She hears a voice from far away, calling out for help. Hears a rush of footsteps. Doesn’t recognize the eyes peering at her, obeys the hands pulling her to her feet, guiding her down the hall.

~*~

“What happened to me?”

Casey feels - well, she feels  _ cold _ , but she supposes she can blame that on the ice pack against the back of her neck, the two ice cubes sitting on her palms like the Stigmata of Christ. The cold she senses seems the only real thing in the world; the rest of reality seems abstract, theoretical, like the outside world exists only as an echo of her mind.

She has entered dreamspace, as she often thinks of it: the realm where her imaginings seem more real than life, where she is a ghost, moving through the world without touching it.

“You left the light.”

Casey turns her heavy head and looks into the calm, unsympathetic face of Kevin Crumb. It is Patricia, Casey guesses, observing the placid line of the mouth, the hood of the eyes, the upward tilt of the chin. “The light,” Casey repeats. 

“I suppose I am not surprised you possess that ability. Of course it is a different thing altogether when there is nobody to take the light as you leave it. Rather a dramatic display, I should think.”

Casey curls her fingers around the ice cubes. The cold throbs painfully against her skin, making it slick as the ice melts. “I used to think I was having seizures.” 

Patricia hums, glancing down at Casey’s hands. “The ice brings you back. Grounds you into your body. That’s what the psychiatrist used to say, anyways; it was Dennis who discovered the ice, long ago, back when he was Kevin’s only other option. He had to learn to stay in the light at all costs. But he didn’t understand why it worked.” Patricia folds herself onto the chair by the cot, crossing her legs and lacing her fingers over one knee. They are back in the small bedroom. “The boy was very worried for you. I suggest we use this episode of yours to assist in our leaving this wretched place.”

Casey sits up slowly, letting the ice slide off her hands. It begins to melt into the mattress immediately, and Patricia, spotting the forming puddle, shivers. Her face twists unpleasantly. 

“Clean up that mess,” she snaps. “Dennis is howling, and he needs his rest.”

Casey flinches, flicking the ice cubes onto the floor. “It’s just water,” she says grouchily. 

Patricia retrieves a towel from the bathroom and mops up the ice without further comment, her face pinched in anger. She pulls the icepack from the back of Casey’s neck. “The boy will be back any minute. He went to go speak with that awful man. We should have a plan for getting out of here before he returns.”

“What do you think of all this militia stuff?” Casey asks. She rubs her hands together. They feel rubbery and numb.

Patricia sniffs, laying out the towels to dry on the desk. “I think it’s dangerous,” she replies. “I think it is probably foolhardy. And yet perhaps it is an opportunity for us to be avenged upon that wicked woman, and for the Beast to show his power.”

Casey leans her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. She feels tired, and there is a quiet humming in her thoughts that is soothing. Everything is loose and unconnected, her thoughts tripping along slowly, like she is coming down off a powerful drug. “You still believe in him.”

“Of course I do,” Patricia says. Her voice is steel. “You don’t?”

“I believe he exists. I believe he is powerful. But I think he is more danger to Kevin and to the world than he is help.”

Casey cannot see Patricia’s sneer, but she can hear it in the woman’s voice. “He gives Kevin what Kevin needs.”

“Murder?” asks Casey, almost laughing. “Mayhem and destruction? Imprisonment? Is this right now really better than your life before?”

A long stretch of silence. Casey cracks an eyelid, sees Patricia poised like a crane in the middle of the room, looking down on Casey imperiously. “You sound like Dennis,” Patricia says flatly. It is not a compliment. “Where would you be, without the Beast?” Patricia continues. “Right now. Under your uncle, perhaps? Would he be spreading your thighs as we speak?”

A cold flush rolls down Casey’s body. Her eyes remained fixed on Patricia, but her mind skids away. The hideous words land against Casey’s skin without piercing, without meaning. Casey imagines nothing. 

“The Beast saved you,” Patricia points out. Her eyes glimmer with malicious satisfaction as both women sit in the truth of this statement. “The Beast liberated you. Before we found you, you were utterly alone. Nobody in the world loved you. No mother, no father, no sisters or brothers… only the uncle who used you for your meat. But now you have Dennis who loves you and the Beast who defends you.”

Casey licks her lips. Her heart thumps steadily against her ribs. She supposes Patricia is right: she does feel Dennis’ love, a weight that pressed upon her lungs. She does feel the Beast’s fierceness, a second monster in the dark woods. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, Patricia.”

Patricia gives her a thin smile. “Let’s.”

~*~

In the end, it isn’t even very difficult to talk Joseph into releasing them. Callum had left on some kind of business, and Joseph subsides almost immediately to Patricia’s insistence that the confinement was damaging Casey’s health. Joseph drives them in awkward silence to the nearest greyhound station, and Patricia and Casey board a bus back to Los Angeles. 

Joseph had left them with a piece of paper that had a date and location. He said to come and meet at that place and time, and they would receive instructions on how to find the next meeting of the militia, where they could meet more organizers and get a sense of what was happening. 

“Me too?” Casey had asked. 

“If you want,” Joseph had answered. “Only if you want.”

Casey did not know what she wanted. Patricia sat erect and unmoving beside her, lips pursed in a small frown that seemed nothing more than the woman’s customary expression. Thirty minutes into the bus ride Patricia coughs delicately. “Dennis would like to see you,” she says.

Casey looks over and sees Kevin slump against the window, twitching. He sits up stiffly, tensing his jaw and glancing around with a sharp, assessing eye. “Where we headed?”

The gruff, familiar tone sends a pulse of pleasure through Casey’s middle. She smiles a little. “To LA. How are you feeling?”

Dennis studies her intently. His expression is even but somehow full, a clarity and focus in his eyes that makes Casey feel that she is the most important thing in the world right at that moment. “Better,” he says. “You?”

“Glad to be out of that place.”

He nods once. “They know where we’re going. Where we live, where we work, who we… spend time with.”

Casey shrugs. “We could run. They’d find us, though. Or if not them, somebody worse.”

He nods again, looking away. He leans to look out the window. They are passing through the graveyard of a tree orchard, almond trees ripped out by their roots to wither in the baking sun. “I don’t want to fight,” he says, “but I’m tired of runnin’.”

Casey presses her hand onto his shoulder. He shivers a little under her touch, but stays in the light. He is warm and strong and solid beneath her palm. “I’d have to give up everything.”

Dennis’ muscles coil under her hand. “Or you could leave, and we could stay. I could keep the Beast from hunting you.” He turns to look at her, and his eyes are scorching, too bright and intense for her to endure. “I could try.” 

Casey shakes her head. “I won’t pretend that I think it’s right, being with you. You and Patricia and the Beast are responsible for horrible things. Unforgivable things. But somehow it isn’t right to be away from you, either. Maybe we were meant for each other. Maybe that’s the reason I had to go through everything I went through… so that I could be here, now, to keep the Beast from hurting anyone else.” She forces herself to meet Dennis’ blazing eyes, finds herself leaning up into him despite herself. She feels the noise of the bus and the people talking quietly around them fading away; the lights dim; they are two actors on an empty stage, surrounded only by shadows and watchful eyes. “Maybe you were meant to find me, so that we could do some good in this world together.”

Dennis scrutinizes her like he is memorizing her for a test, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “I hope so,” he says at last, hoarse, his voice vibrating into her body. “I hope you’re right, Casey.”

~*~


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!! I am sorry for the long absence. I am getting back into the swing of writing and hope to have another chapter up soon.

~*~

Barry glides about the damp garage, singing off-key, grabbing items at random and tossing them into boxes without looking. Casey is amazed at how similar the garage feels to the basement under the zoo: no sun, peeling wallpaper, yellow lightbulbs dangling overhead. Dennis had given over the light to Barry as soon as they stepped through the door, Barry explaining that he would need to do the packing if they didn’t want it to take several hundred years. 

Barry finds a red beanie and pulls it over his head, spinning on his heel to smile at Casey from across the room. He looks like a tree elf, or maybe Dopey the dwarf. “Cute,” she says, chewing a thumbnail. Barry winks.

It doesn’t take him long to foist all his belongings into boxes, and only a while longer to load everything into the back of her car. He doesn’t bring everything into her apartment - only the essentials. She wonders if he doesn’t want to presume she’ll be letting him stay.

Casey pulls down a bottle of whiskey and waves it questioningly at Barry, who gives her an exaggerated thumbs up. “With coke?” she asks.

“Straight!” he corrects, sounding scandalized. “I’m not a sorority girl.”

They drink together, and Barry becomes more animated with each sip. Casey is getting warmer, her head buzzing pleasantly. Tomorrow, she will have to talk to Stuart, and Jimmy’s mother. Tomorrow, she will pack her bags and run or join a war she never even knew existed. Tomorrow, she will have to decide what to do with the brilliant, bizarre man who is currently admiring himself in the mirror as he tries on the kimono her foster-sister gave her for her birthday last year. 

Tonight, she will drink.

Casey laughs as Barry flounces around her apartment telling wild stories of the zoo and their youth and one ill-fated trip to Florida in his teen years. The whiskey has made him wild - stunning and strange and wonderful. He is too gorgeous for his own good, rolling his body seductively, moving with a purring silkiness that Dennis couldn’t dream of. Casey wants to drape him over herself like a mink coat.

She rises from the couch and crosses to the counter to refill her drink. Barry appears at her back, folding his body over her body, pinning her to the counter. Her heart begins to thump. “Hello there,” she says, pushing backwards into him.

There is no give: only the feel of his chest at her back, solid and warm. “Mm,” he purrs, pressing his smile into her neck. She feels his hips against her ass and thinks he might be getting hard. He is strong - so much stronger than her. She braces her arms against the counter and shoves  _ hard.  _

He doesn’t move at all.

Casey’s pulse is pounding in her skull. It’s too tight; she can’t breath. She turns so she’s facing him, and he’s grinning like a loon, silly, meaning only to tease her. He looks small and slight and effeminate - surely imagines himself to be - but the forearms that grip the countertop are strong, strong, strong. 

Casey reaches up and sinks her nails into the skin of his neck.

Barry winces, his smile dropping in surprise; his eyes roll back; he takes two large steps backwards.

Dennis rubs at his neck. “Ow,” he says, and then pauses thoughtfully. “I’m drunk.”

Casey steps up into his space. Dennis blinks at her, unfocused. “We’ve been getting fucked up,” she explains. “Can you see me?”

Dennis tilts his head. “Yes,” he says. 

“You wear glasses usually,” Casey says.

He blinks again. “I can see you when you’re up close like this. If you move back you’re kind of fuzzy.” He touches his neck again, draws his hand back to see beads of blood on his fingertips. “You scratched me.”

“I  _ clawed  _ you,” Casey corrects. She dips forward and kisses the bloody scratch on his neck, contrite. Dennis hisses. “Barry was crowding me.” Casey licks the blood off her lips, looping her arms around Dennis shoulders and resting her head against his chest. “We’re not having sex tonight.”

Dennis hums, still touching his scratch. “I need a bandaid before this gets on my shirt,” he says, and Casey wouldn’t describe it as  _ whining  _ but she would say it’s damn close.

She goes to the bathroom, rifling through the cabinet until she pulls out a Spiderman band aid. Dennis accepts it without comment, peeling back the paper carefully and applying it to the wound with precise little movements that belie the look of hazy inebriation on his face. 

“Why are we drinking?” he asks, trailing after her. He is, for once, not looking at the mess and disarray all around him - he is looking only at her.

“Because,” says Casey, arms spread wide, turning in lazy loops around the room. She bounces between the few boxes Barry had brought up. “We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

Casey spins a little too sharply and over-balances. Dennis steps forward, catching her and tilting her back easily into his body. She sways into him, pleased, smelling the smell of his aftershave and soap and just him. His shirt is soft under her cheek. “We moved in together.”

He laughs. Casey leans back abruptly, staring at his face in amazement. She wishes could bottle the sound of that laugh, have it to sip slowly on cold nights.

“I can’t believe you laughed!” Casey says, balling her hands into fists and thumping his shoulders. “You’re usually so grumpy and rude!”

Dennis’ eyebrow flicks upward for a second before he makes his face into a parody of his usual scowl. Casey grins, swaying forward. 

“You’re Grumpy. And Barry is Dopey. Or maybe Hedwig is. Hedwig is Happy!”

Dennis gives her a stern look. “I am not a dwarf,” he says, his seriousness undercut by the slur in his words. 

“You’re short,” Casey points out sagely.

Dennis gives her a look of real offense. “I’m not!” He draws himself up, towering over her. Stares down at her with glittering intensity. “I am the tallest of all of us.”

Casey straightens her shoulders and presses her palm to the top of her head. She slowly moves it forward until it comes to rest on the top of Dennis’ head, his prickly hairs rasping against her skin. “You’re the same height as me.”

Dennis narrows his eyes. “Your hand moved up,” he says flatly. 

She shakes her head in denial.

Dennis steps up until he is nose to nose with her. She smells the whiskey on his breath, feels the heat from his body. “I am taller than you,” he explains calmly, “otherwise you wouldn’t be looking up at me right now.”

Casey, considering this logic, takes a long sip from her whiskey. Dennis retrieves it from her hand and takes a pull himself. “You know what, Dennis, you may be right.” She leans forward another fraction of an inch. Their noses brush. “Dennis?”

“Mm?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

Dennis gives her a sideways look, his eyes hooded. Casey’s cheeks heat up. She is feeling daring and she wants to laugh and she wants to kiss him. 

“How are you supposed to know?” she goes on when he doesn’t answer. “What does it feel like?”

The muscle in Dennis’ jaw flexes slowly, like he is chewing up his words before he speaks. “I guess you can’t stop thinkin’ about ‘em.” The alcohol is thickening his accent, making it brassy and low. He is gazing at her steadily, and his eyes are devouring. “You look at ‘em whenever they’re around… your eyes are always pulled to them. You go crazy with worry if you think somethin’s happened to ‘em. You would kill anybody who tried to hurt ‘em. You want to be around ‘em all the time.”

Casey mulls this over for a moment. “Have you ever felt that way, Dennis?”

He lifts his shoulder in the barest shrug. “Once or twice,” he says, his voice more breath than sound.

Casey runs her thumb along the edge of his jaw. “Me too,” she says. 

Dennis gently pries the whiskey from Casey’s loose grip and swallows down the remainder of the glass. “You’ll need to get in contact with that boyfriend of yours, won’t you?”

Casey stares at him for a moment, caught off guard. Guilt twists in her stomach like nausea. “I kissed Barry.” Casey lolls her head against Dennis’ shoulder. Presses her mouth into the warm good-smelling fabric of his shirt. “Does that make you jealous?”

“Not really,” he says. Casey pinches him. “Ow.” He grabs her wrist and pulls it up, inspecting her hand like its a foreign agent. She pulls at her wrist but he doesn’t let go, and his strength is iron. “Why would I be jealous?”

“Cos you’d rather it had been you,” Casey suggests, leaning in more comfortably onto his shoulder.

Dennis hums, pulls her wrist towards him. Presses the slightest kiss to the soft skin where the veins pulse blue, just beneath her palm. 

Casey doesn’t expect her throat to ache, her eyes to burn with tears. Something about it is suddenly too real, too intimate. Casey distracts herself with his body, scraping her nails lightly down his shirt, feeling the outline of his toned chest and stomach. He tenses under her touch. She presses her thigh between his legs, biting at his neck as he grunts in surprise. He is hard; she isn’t surprised but she is proud, excited, flushing with warmth and wetness. She rolls her hips.

“Hey,” says Dennis, his voice roughened with feeling. “Easy.” He grips her hips, stilling her, pushing her away.

Casey braces her hands on his shoulders and looks at him. There are twin spots of color in his cheeks, and a five o’clock shadow along his jaw. His blue eyes are wide open and a little unfocused. He looks drunk and amazed. 

He is beautiful. 

“Maybe we should have sex,” Casey says. 

A look of amusement flickers over Dennis’ face. “Not so drunk,” he says. 

“Why not?”

He frowns, struggling for a reason. “You got your boyfriend. Your  _ life _ . I tried to take your life once, Casey; I won’t do it again.” Casey glares at him in mute rage, and Dennis lets his head fall back, mouth open as he looks at the ceiling, almost smiling. “And anyways it wouldn’t be good. Not all drunk and messy.” His face twists at the prospect, and he looks around as though noticing the clutter in the apartment for the first time. 

“No,” says Casey, “no cleaning. Don’t look at it. We can clean tomorrow.” 

He closes his eyes, drawing in a fortifying breath. 

Casey feels a wave of sleepiness come over her, and yawns before she can stop herself. She looks up to see Dennis giving her a wry look. “Alright, alright,” she says, waving away his unspoken comment. “Let’s go to bed. Come sleep with me?”

He nods, following her dutifully behind the room divider she’d set up. She pulls her clothes off clumsily; gets caught in her shirt. Dennis pulls it over her head. 

Casey flops onto the mattress with a loud sigh. Dennis’ only concession to nighttime dress is unbuttoning his topmost button. He lays down, mostly gracefully, with only a slight moment of imbalance. They turn on their sides so they are facing one another. 

“Were you ever sad that it was me he let go, and not Marcia?”

There can be no question who  _ he  _ is. Dennis turns to stone beside her, rolling onto his back. His expression is flat, his eyes hard as he stares at the ceiling. “I never wanted anyone to die.”

Casey reaches forward and traces his frowning mouth with her fingertip. He closes his eyes. “That’s not what I asked.”

A tense moment of silence stretches between them. 

“I watched you sleep,” Dennis says suddenly. Casey props her cheek on her hand, curious. “Hedwig must’ve taken the light and got into bed with you. He fell asleep and I woke up.” Dennis releases a sharp breath. He seems anxious, distressed. “You were so quiet. You tucked your hands under your chin just like a little girl. I looked at you and imagined him ripping you up. You would be screaming, fighting. I tried to imagine that you deserved it. I thought about raping you. Then you wouldn’t be of any use to him. I couldn’t get hard, though.” Casey realizes with a start that Dennis is crying, tears like gleaming diamonds dripping down the side of his face. She wipes them away. “I sat there for hours and watched you sleep. I was right there, and you didn’t wake up. You weren’t afraid of me. The Beast could’ve come forward right then and slaughtered you. You were so helpless, so young. I wanted to keep you safe and instead I chose to feed you to a monster.” Dennis turns to her, his eyes red. There is a look of suffering on his face that makes Casey’s throat ache. “That’s what makes me sad, Casey.” 

Casey nods. She has no words she can think of that would be adequate to capture the feelings roiling through her body. She lets her hand rest against his cheek as they fall asleep. 

~*~

He wakes up and his head  _ hurts _ . His tummy feels yucky, and he doesn’t want to open his eyes but they’re already open. He sees next to him it’s his girlfriend, Casey. She’s asleep.

Hedwig wonders if maybe she had sex with Mr. Dennis last night. He feels mad because she’s  _ his  _ girlfriend and Mr. Dennis knows that, and also Mr. Dennis old and mean anyways and Hedwig has been way nicer to Casey because he never tried to feed her to the Beast. 

Hedwig wonders what the sex was like. He knows it means that Mr. Dennis put his - their - thingy inside of Casey but Hedwig isn’t sure where it would go. And how he’d get it in there. He thinks he should wake her up and ask her but whenever he moves he feels like he’s going to puke.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice sounds funny and scratchy. “Hey, hey. Casey. Casey. Hey. Casey. Wake up. Casey.”

She rolls over, sighing. She is really pretty - Hedwig likes her long hair. She smells kind of gross though. Her eyes open and she looks at him. “Good morning,” she says.

Hedwig sits up slowly. His head pounds; even his hair hurts. He squeezes his hands against the side of his face. “Ow ow ow,” he says. He looks down at Casey. “I’m gonna puke.”

Her eyes go all wide and she jumps out of bed and runs away. Hedwig leans over and gags but no throw up comes out. Casey is running back, and puts a small trash can in front of him. “Throw up in this,” she says.

Hedwig feels shivery and bad and sick. He lays back down. “Am I dying?”

“No,” says Casey. “You’re hungover. Dennis and I drank too much.”

Hedwig looks at Casey. “Mr. Dennis isn’t allowed to drink alcohol because he says it makes trouble,” Hedwig informs her.

Casey smiles. “Well, we stayed pretty safe.”

Hedwig stares at her suspiciously. “Did you guys have sex? Etcetera?”

Casey flushes. Hedwig feels a rush of shock and he is  _ so mad.  _ He sits up to  _ slap  _ her but he moves too fast and then he feels so, so, so sick.

Hedwig pukes into the trash can. “Mr. Dennis is a jerkface,” Hedwig moans, screwing his eyes shut. His mouth tastes like sour farts. “This is his fault. He should be in the light.”

Hedwig sinks back into his mind.

~*~

Casey leaves Kevin at her apartment. She steps up the porch of the duplex. Her hand is shaking as she raises it to knock.

He answers straight away. He is tall and thin and pale, and there is a sadness to the bent line of his brows as he looks at her.

“Stuart,” she says.

He steps aside for her to come through. “Would you like anything to drink?”

Casey shakes her head.

Stuart wanders through the cramped living room into the kitchen. She lingers by the couch, and he reappears in a moment carrying a glass of water. “Please,” he says softly, motioning to the couch, “sit.”

Casey does not sit.

They stand there in silence for a few agonizing seconds. Casey’s heart is pounding and her face feels hot. There is so much she ought to say, but she can’t imagine finding the words. She thinks of the man back at her apartment, probably still in her bed, with whom she did not have sex last night. 

“Stuart,” she manages at last, “I’m so---”

“Don’t.” His voice is not cold but it is empty, somehow; the warmth he usually holds is gone. “Please don’t. I… I figured you’d just left me. You didn’t want to see me anymore.” He looks at her, and his eyes are a little wet. He is not destroyed, though. He is not as weak as she had guessed. “There are things I don’t know about you. I’ve always been aware of that, you know? I thought maybe you just needed time. I wanted to know them. I wanted to know you. But now I’m wondering if maybe there are things I will never understand.”

Casey feels his words land in her gut like a punch. She had expected his anger, and had feared it. She had not expected him to be so honest. “I wanted so much to be normal,” she whispers. Stuart looks at her closely. She hadn’t really lied to him, but it is the first time she has ever told him the truth. “I knew you were a good person and I wanted to be with a good person. I wanted to have the life that I see everyone around me has. I’ve never had that life. I’ve never lived in that world. I thought maybe I could cut out all the bad things inside of me. I thought I could leave them back in Philadelphia.”

Stuart nods slightly. “But you couldn’t?”

“No,” Casey says. Her voice is wavering; she raises one hand and rests it against her throat. Takes a moment to breathe. “No, they’re inside of me. I guess I always knew that, deep down. It’s like weeds that grow inside of me and I thought I pulled them but I only broke the stems. The roots are there. I can’t reach them.”   
  


“Can you show them to me?” he asks. She sees the aching love in his face, that soft acceptance that she had always longed for and yet resented. 

“No,” Casey answers. She was not certain until this moment, but now it is so clear she isn’t sure how she ever wondered. There is a terrible fear inside of her, a bitter rage; there is a rotting heart of darkness in her soul, there is a september wilderness, there is a little girl in a tent who is herself some kind of monster. There is something John put inside of her and she knows that it will never leave. 

Casey thinks of Kevin, of the two gashes on his neck, probably scabbed over by now. Raw flesh. She remembers Dennis as he pressed his fingers to the wound, as he looked at her - neither angry nor afraid. She had hurt him but only because she had to, and he had understood her without needing to ask.

Casey hardly remembers the rest of what she and Stuart say. Empty words, they both know it. She leaves without any feeling, and stepping outside she sees that it has begun to rain; she steps off the porch and is soaked to the skin with it, her hair plastered to her face, cold and shocking. It is time to return to the murderer sleeping in her bed. 

_ I love him _ , she realizes helplessly, looking up into the billowing grey storm clouds.  _ I am in love with him.  _

She drives home in the pouring rain. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: some fucked up shit below. A brief but graphic depiction of a dead woman's body being placed in a sexually explicit pose.

~*~

Patricia sings songs she can’t remember learning. Her mornings are for prayer, and evenings are for penance; she carries folded newspaper clippings in the small leather clutch the others know not to open. Each clipping is a small rectangular photograph, the edges very neatly trimmed, of a young woman. There are sixteen young women in total.

Patricia presses the pad of her thumb against the cool steel of her crucifix. 

Sometimes Dennis says the oddest things in his sleep: “grandmother,” he will whimper, “wake up, don’t leave me here alone, wake up.” Patricia will stroke her palm across the sweaty slope of his forehead and hush him.

“I am right here,” she will tell him, without knowing why, “I have never left you.”

Patricia had once taken the light in the warehouse before their capture, finding Dennis on his hands and knees sobbing such that Kevin could not breath. There is thick, creamy blood smeared up their arms, dripping from their teeth. There is a sponge in their right hand. “Shush,” she tells Dennis. “It’s over. All we have to do is clean up.”

“Look at her,” Dennis moans. 

Patricia looks. The girl is on her back, her intestines slopped across her abdomen like spaghetti. Her knees are bent, her thighs spread. One hand rests motionless on the pillow of soft hairs growing upon her pubic bone. Her waxy, purpling fingers splay apart her labia, exposing her pale vulva. 

This was not the position she had died in. 

Yes: Patricia would not deny it - there is something familiar in the pose. “The Beast is sending us a message.”

“What message?” Dennis cries, trying and failing to wipe the blood out of his eyes. “What message?”

“I don’t know.” Patricia reaches over to squeeze the sponge out into the bucket of bleach-water Dennis had prepared. “Remind me, Dennis: was it Kevin’s mother? I can’t remember.”

Deep inside themselves, Dennis throws his head back and screams.

~*~

“I can smell his stench on your body.”

Casey tries not to move as he snuffles at her collarbone, his hot breath mushrooming against her skin. She raises one hand and brushes her fingers against the bristling hairs on his scalp. “I went to say goodbye.”

His skin is feverish, slick with sweat. She can see a red flush on his cheeks that extends down his bare chest. She can see his pulse thumping angrily in his neck. She can see his eyes, crow-black, looking into her with cold interest. “You belong to us.”

Casey sighs. The Beast straightens, and she marvels at the unnatural size of him, at the electric energy that clings to him like a lightning cloud. She reaches up and sets her hands on his shoulders. He twitches beneath her touch like a horse might flinch beneath a spur. “We belong together,” she corrects. 

The Beast stares at her, chewing on this thought. His strange eyes shift restlessly across her face. There is saliva smeared over his lips. His breath is heaving, and everything about him seems unsteady and perpetually in motion. 

Casey takes a half step forward, into the buzzing heat that seems to steam off his unnatural skin. He focuses his black eyes on her, and this close she can see the faint ring of blue around his flared pupils like a shadow on the moon. Casey lifts her thumb to his mouth, wiping at his lower lip. He puckers it, his face constricting slightly. He is not breathing.

As she kisses him, she notices the feel of his beard scraping the tender skin of her cheeks, the wetness around his mouth, the smell of sweat and iron that is nothing like the smell of a man. He is motionless beneath her. She presses one, two light kisses to his mouth, and his expression softens under her lips as she dots kisses under his eyes, along his jaw. He exhales. She kisses his mouth again and he kisses in reply - slightly, awkwardly, like he isn’t really sure what to do. 

Does he hesitate because he is a beast? Or only because he loves her? 

“Let’s run away,” she breathes against him. 

“Run,” he echoes, a clear disdain in his warped, rumbling voice. “No more running. The time for fear is over. The time for blood has begun.”

Casey leans back to look into his strange, brutal face. His flat black eyes gaze at her steadily, his lips curling back over his uneven teeth. The notch that usually holds his brows together is smoothed out, and he looks younger than the others, strangely boyish in his animal rage. “No more girls,” Casey begs.

He shakes his head slightly. “No more girls,” he confirms. “You are all the strength we require. They have been keeping our kind in chains. Killing us like beasts.” He flexes his hands, and then plants them on the wall on either side of Casey’s head, leaning towards her. She sees the strength trembling in his muscles of his arms and chest. His eyes remained fastened to her face. “Now the beasts will break the chains and kill the killers.”

Casey arches forward, brushing her nose against his nose. “We could just run away,” she tries again. “Get in my car and drive and drive. Only us. No blood. No death.” She runs her hands across his chest, feels his heart thundering against his ribs. He shivers, his elbows bending until their foreheads are pressed together. “Would you run away with me? We could love each other. Do we really need anything else?”

Their breath see-saws unsteadily between her mouth and his. He slips his head down to rest against her shoulder. “You are strongest of us all,” he says. Casey blinks, surprised, raising one hand to rest on the back of his head. “Where you go, we will follow.” The Beast straightens, his face hard and resigned as he looms over her. “You give Kevin what the rest of us, even I, cannot. Where will you lead our lives? A long empty road of hiding and silence? We will hide you and defend you until the last of us falls. Or to fight and be avenged, live gloriously in our power? We will destroy all who challenge you, avenge ourselves against all those who harmed you.”

Casey feels the Beast’s speech rest dully in her chest, like a clenched fist around her heart. Fight or run - struggle or defeat - truth or safety. Life or death. The decision she could not make, not she who had had no decisions, who had always been powerless, who had been pulled by the changing tides of her life without a possibility of resistance. 

_ Where you lead, we will follow. _

“Let’s find these Clover fuckers, then,” she says, not really sure she believes the words as she speaks them, tracing the paths of his many jagged veins as they spread like spiderwebs over his collarbones. She hopes this is the answer that will please him - she wants to do well, she wants to impress him, he who has seen her as _ exceptional. _She wants to be this fierce avenging angel he has made her out to be, worthy of his amazement, giving life to the venomous rage that has hummed along her skin for years. She wants to be happy.

She wants to be good.

The Beast presses his grinning mouth to her ear, breathing raggedly, each exhale catching on a soft growl. “Then let us leave at once.”

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you were starting to forget that the Beast is a twisted sister. Also, Dennis has seen some shit. Patricia has too, but she's bloodless. This cohort of fractured selves has a lot of seriously depraved fantasies putrefying in the depths of them. Their love is sincere, but so is their sadism. Not clear that Casey knows at all what she's getting herself into - oh, the folly of youth!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, what to say about my incredibly long absence and delay... I lost the momentum and it was hard to get it back. This quarantine has helped me refuel the writing mojo, and this chapter is accordingly reflective of what's going on all around us. I found I couldn't write a storyline that didn't reflect the changes the world has been through these past few months, and as such, consider yourself warned that this contains COVID 19 and related themes.

~*~

TEN MONTHS LATER

~*~

She wouldn’t call it domestic bliss - that would be childish, and she’s not a child. Not anymore. Crouched in the garden, picking out weeds with her short nails and examining the hollyhock sprouts that are looking stronger each day, it does  _ feel _ like a sort of bliss.

She turns as she hears his crunching steps behind her; he navigates his way carefully towards the honeysuckle, avoiding the small flowers she has tended so carefully, having guarded from the choke of weeds and the hungry mandibles of grasshoppers. He is holding a Coke bottle with a saucer melted onto the end, filled with cloudy water.

“You did it,” Casey says, standing stiffly. “Maybe a nice high up branch, so they see it?”

He nods, pulling lightly at the different branches to find one sturdy enough. “I just mixed sugar and water. I hope that’s okay.”

“I read that’s what hummingbirds eat, so I think it’s perfect,” says Casey. 

Dennis looks over his shoulder at her, eyes squinted against the sun - riotously blue. His beard has grown in, red as a fox, and his hair falls in dark curling loops against his temples. She thinks sometimes he is like the flowers she is growing in the garden, hungry for sun and water and soft soil, and with her tender, attentive care, he will bloom. 

His task for the hummingbird feeder completed, he pulls himself up effortlessly to sit on the fence. She tries to follow and flops back onto the ground; he huffs a laugh and hoists her up with one arm. She forgets his strength sometimes. It has been months since she has seen the Beast, and Kevin has seemed so deliciously normal. 

“Any news about a new mission?”

He shakes his head slowly from side to side, crossing his arms over his chest in his customary posture of defense. She doesn’t think he would lie to her but she really isn’t sure. “Everything is locked down. Even secret paramilitary organizations, apparently.” He raises his fingertips to touch at the wiry hairs of his beard, his brow tightening in displeasure.  _ Filthy,  _ she had heard him snarling to himself at night from their shared bathroom as his beard and hair grew in,  _ disgusting, repulsive filth…  _ But he did not shave it. She had asked him to grow it, for their safety, and he had obeyed without complaint. 

“So strange,” she says. “This virus. Such weird timing.” He nods and doesn’t answer. Such is the conversational richness of time with Dennis. Casey tugs at the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Can I talk to one of the others?”

She sees for a half of a half of a second that Dennis is shriveling with wounded rejection, but before she can open her mouth to speak he is gone and Barry is stretching his arms up over his head and yawning, face turned to the bright sun like a flower. “Apparently Joseph Dunn has the Rona,” Barry says conversationally, scratching at his beard and looking at Casey with his wide guileless eyes.

So there  _ was  _ news. “Is he okay?”

Barry lifts one shoulder. “Sounds like he’s in the hospital.”

Casey feels rushes of hot and cold up and down her body. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “Oh god… is there some way I can see him, do you think?”

Barry shrugs again, looking doubtful. “I’m sure you could sweet talk Dennis into smuggling you in.”

There is an edge to Barry’s voice as he says this, something sarcastic and unkind. Casey knows that Barry does not love her as the others do. Casey has heard snatches of his whispered conversations with Patricia:  _ manipulative, unnatural control, brainwashed.  _ “No,” she mumbles, though the idea does appeal to her. “I wouldn’t put you guys in that kind of danger.”

Barry arches a brow but chooses not to reply on that point. “Jade sewed us some new masks,” he says instead, picking at a paint streak stained into his jeans with distaste. “They’ve got pineapples and octopus patterns.”

Casey smiles. She leans sideways, resting her weight against the solid warmth of his shoulder. Barry doesn’t love her, but he can’t seem to avoid enjoying her closeness; the people inside Kevin are not as apart as they liked to pretend. He wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her body comfortably close. He smells like the hot glass of the hummingbird feeder, of his soap and deodorant, of salt and a faint tinge of blood. 

It is strange having Kevin around so much. For the first few months since LA, he had been constantly off on mysterious missions for the Militia. He did try to tell her what he was doing - even Dennis was not of that stoic breed of masculinity that insisted on superfluous secrets - but his narratives were disjointed and scrambled, confused by his many changing faces and the slippery subterfuge of his work. It was the killing, Casey suspected; it stretched and strained Kevin’s psyche, disorganizing him into fragments that could not create a coherent memory. 

But then COVID-19 had arrived and stopped the world like a finger on the pendulum of a clock. 

Casey closes her eyes, trying to imagine where Joseph Dunn might be right now - alone in some bright corner, surrounded by beeping, wheezing machines, isolated and full of tubes and wires with a pipe down his throat. Miserable. Dying. Who would the hospital call? Joseph is an orphan, his only friends the maniacal warriors of an organization that isn’t supposed to exist. 

Casey leaps down on the fence. “What if he dies?”

She hears him sigh. “Death comes for us all.” It is Patricia. Casey turns and sees her holding her hand against her throat, a delicate gesture of modesty and defense. Patricia looks into Casey’s eyes, cold and assessing. “You love that boy?”

“I love you,” Casey replies flatly.

Patricia winces, fluttering in alarm like a bird preparing to take flight. She vaults gracefully off the fence and wends her way towards the door of their bungalow. “I shall prepare us a meal.”

Casey waits for her to disappear inside before she lays down on the long grass growing in the garden. The blades are cool and prickling against her skin, slightly damp. The sun is hot on her face. The sound of cars is distant. She can hear no people.

The world is mostly silent.

~*~

They live together in a small house in a flat, colorless sprawl of land called Tipton, California, on the edge of the slightly larger but no more distinctive Tulare. Dennis had found himself work assisting in the maintenance of the local cemetery, since the groundsman was getting on in years and had difficulty with some of the physical labor. Casey works at a diner in Tulare serving apple pies and greasy chicken fried steak to local farmers making predictions about crop yields and young men speaking in hushed tones about their deals and transport lines. The town has a timeless feel that is at once despairing and peaceful; the feel of the place and people seems as motionless as the stifling summer air. 

Kevin and Casey had come here to escape the world, conspicuous outsiders in a rural community that did not welcome them. But the Corona Virus had followed on their heels easily enough, a reminder that nowhere was truly separate. The fingers of the past reached for Casey anywhere she lingered long enough.

Kevin, at least, was relatively safe from discovery. As a part of their clean up, Clover had slowly, methodically erased all record of his crimes and even his existence; though surely many in Philadelphia remembered the grisly murders and the serious blue eyes plastered over their TV screens, the internet and archives had been scrubbed clean of his name, face or the facts of his crimes. And in the midst of a global pandemic, his disappearance was as quick and silent as an exhale of breath.

Casey found him peeling shrimp as she came inside. The briny smell filled the small house. She might open a window, but the blistering air from outside would only thicken in the walls of their bungalow and provide small relief. She came up behind him, leaning her head on his shoulder blade and pressing a kiss into the soft material of his shirt. 

“Barry.”

He wiggled his hips playfully. “Lucky guess,” he answered, and she could hear his smile. She made a game of trying to guess who it was without seeing him move or hearing him speak. “How does shrimp paella sound?”

“Delicious.” She stepped into the small living room, putting away their books and laptop and setting their shoes by the door to save Dennis the work later. “You work tomorrow?”

He worked odd hours, when the old man had need of him to repair a headstone or transplant a shrub. “5am,” Barry answered.

If Casey woke at 4, she would see Dennis. He would hide from her otherwise, as punishment for her asking to see another alter. 

The onions bubbling on the stove, Barry followed her into the living room. Casey was flipping through muted channels on the TV. It was all the same: the virus, the virus, the virus. And a rerun of FRIENDS. 

Barry flopped next to her. Casey turned towards him immediately, thumbing open the top button of his flannel. She squirmed closer, pressing the length of her body into his side. 

His head fell back against the couch; his breathing deepened. She had him. It didn’t take much. “You were angry at me.” Her hand drifted across his chest, soothing and arousing. She dragged her fingers down, unbuttoning his shirt one by one, resting her hand against the waistband of his jeans. 

He looked at her from beneath hooded eyes, his pupils wide. For a moment he looked like the Beast, but much softer. “I just hate hearing you talk about that kid,” Barry explained. He was only honest when she had him like this, under her fingertips.

As a reward, Casey pressed the heel of her palm lightly against the crotch of his jeans. His hips arched reflexively, his erection pressing back with equal pressure. “Why? You know I love you more than anyone. I’d never betray any of you.” She dragged her nail against the length of his cock.

He grunted slightly, swallowing. She watched the bob of his adam’s apple. “I don’t know. We get jealous. I’m sorry.” He raised his hand to lay his rough palm against her cheek, his thumb edging between the part of her lips. 

“Jealous?” she whispered, pulling his hand from her face and pressing him backwards into the sofa. She felt his muscles underneath her hands, coiled, impossibly strong but trembling beneath her. She felt powerful. Her teeth clenched in anger. “Do you think I’m thinking of Joseph Dunn right now?” She swung her leg over his hips, grinding down on him. His abs crunched under her hand, his eyes rolling shut. “Do you?” she asked sharply.

“No,” he rasped. 

She rocked against him in a quick, harsh rhythm until she felt his breath turn to gasps and his cock pulsing with hardness against her. She stopped, and pressed her nails into the skin that fluttered over the pulse of his throat. “I want to talk to Dennis.”

Barry shook his head, blinking his eyes open. “No, he…”

She dug her nails in deeper; Barry winced in pain. “Do as I say.”

She could hear  _ him _ in her voice when she spoke this way - his rumbling growl, the flash of rage in his brown eyes. The tone that brooked no refusal. Uncle John, as strong as a god and as frightening. Now she had another sort of monster, but he was pinned helplessly beneath her, panting and weak as a lamb. 

She saw Kevin’s brow bend towards, his mouth curl into a frown. Dennis. The flush in his cheeks did not lesson, or the gallop of his pulse, but he met her eye unsparingly. “What do you want?”

Casey wrapped her fingers loosely around his throat. “Don’t ever withhold information from me again. If I want to fuck Joseph Dunn, if I fall in love with Joseph Dunn, that’s my business, not yours. You can’t do anything about it and you won’t try.”

Dennis’ face constricted with rage, his body turning to stone beneath her. Casey leaned her weight into the hand around his neck, choking him, as the other pulled his jeans open. She rubbed against his erection as it strained against his boxers. 

“You want to fuck me, don’t you?” she whispered, lowering her mouth so that her words brushed her lips against his. “You don’t care who I think about as long as you get inside my pussy, do you? I’m just like any other teenaged girl you want to fuck. Everybody fears the Beast, but you’re the predator, aren’t you?”

She spoke the words with a venomous softness, and though her anger was glittering and sharp, she paused for a moment until she felt him getting harder underneath her hand, his hips shifting restlessly as they sought for friction, his hands clenching and unclenching where he kept them pinned at his sides. His breath rattled against her other palm. 

“You’re an animal, Dennis. A filthy fucking animal.”

These last words snapped him like a rubber band; he lurched up at once, a sharp and powerful movement that startled Casey backwards. In an instant he had flipped them so that she was beneath him, pinned by his hips as they rutted against her, his body coiled over her like a spring. He wasn’t rough but he was immovably strong and heavy. “Watch your mouth,” he snarled, and then kissed her.

She pressed at his shoulder, panic beginning to flare in her chest. She wrenched her mouth away, gasping, her body tightening and her head spinning. 

“Easy, easy,” she heard him rumble, shifting his weight up off her. He pulled his head away and sat up, panting. She watched him as he regained himself with some effort. A muscle in his jaw flexed as he looked away. “You shouldn’t provoke me.”

But Casey had got hold of her panic, and it had turned liquidly into lust. She followed Dennis onto her knees and tugged at the hem of his undershirt. He sighed sharply. “You shouldn’t keep things from me,” she replied lightly. He pulled his shirt up over his head. “I’m not going to let you fuck me. So you can crawl away and jerk yourself off, or you can do as I say.”

Dennis looked at her from beneath his furrowed brows, his eyes hard and flat as glass. But he did not stop her as she stroked at the bare skin of his chest, pressing her thumbs into the muscle of his stomach, the blade of his hips. 

“God,” she said beneath her breath, “your body is so fucking sexy.” She leaned forward and bit the meat of his shoulder. He tensed and exhaled, and she knew it turned him on as much as her. His skin was deliciously hot beneath her hands, smooth and slick with sweat as she lathed her tongue down his chest, the seam of his ribs. “Now,” she continued, kissing at the mark her teeth had left and looking up coyly into his severe, beloved face, “will you do as you’re told?”

~*~


	15. Chapter 15

Dennis rose well before the sun, dressing quickly and quietly into a tank top and sweats. He slipped out the door into the inky, starlit darkness, the sky yawning and cloudless above. There were no street lamps on these wide streets, no sidewalks; this seemed as far from the city that had created Dennis as he could imagine. 

He broke into a fast, loping run, breathing even and deep. It was not yet 4am, but he saw lights flickering on in windows: farmers keep unholy hours. 

Out here in the silent nighttime air, Dennis could think. He felt glad to be away from Casey, and felt guilty at the gladness. It was just too close, having her with him all the time. He and Kevin were creatures of solitude. 

How things had changed this past year. He had more blood on his hands than ever before, and the Beast feasted gleefully upon the hearts of the Clover Society members as they were hunted one by one. Kevin remained nonetheless inexplicably free and unmolested, and it wasn’t that the Militia had the strength to protect him; it seemed the Clover had so thoroughly erased him it was hard to find him again even as he ate the living flesh of their own organization. And so Kevin built a small strange life, brutal but not alone: sharing his days and his nights with the beautiful broken hearted girl he’d once stolen and planned to murder, when he was not hunting down men and women to kill them in their beds. 

Dennis was forever striving for a delicate balance, keeping the Beast busy and sated on the blood of their enemies, keeping Casey safe and provided for back in their home. Keeping the Others in line, not letting any gain too much strength or time in the Light. Not so different from before, perhaps, but the stakes felt higher, the pressure more immediate. 

But then the virus had hit. Now he was trapped in a tiny house in a wasteland of empty fields with a woman he loved and whose heart he longed to devour. 

It was sick, he knew. This connection he shared with his victim, with this girl hardly out of childhood. She was angry and sad and brilliant and kind, and she thought of herself as having him under her thumb, thought of Kevin Crumb as her uncle inverted, a chaste savior who would protect her from the world and surrender to her every whim. 

She was desperately wrong.

She didn’t know how monstrous he really was - or maybe she did, and thought she understood it. She believed she had a hold of him, of all of them. At moments - last night, for instance - it felt true.

But it had felt true with Dr. Fletcher, too. 

~*~

Casey wakes to a clammy palm pressed against her cheek. She pulls away, blinking awake.

“You sleep  _ so  _ much.”

Casey looks around slowly, pulling her hair out of her eyes. She is wedged uncomfortably on the couch, the TV a low babble before her. Hedwig is poised over her, his head floating above hers. “You’re done with work?”

“I’m hungry, can you make dinner? I saw a dog when I was eating lunch today and it looked like a huge white wolf. It was cool. What do you do all day? You don’t even draw or anything. I would be so bored if I was you.”

“Sleeping passes the time.” Casey nudges Hedwig back, and he yields easily enough, squatting on his haunches on the couch next to her and jamming a finger in his ear. There is something boyish about him, even in his body - something in the way he holds himself that aches of childish feeling. But his thighs are thick with muscle, bent at this angle, and she can see the corded veins of his hands and wrists, and she knows what that body is capable of. 

“Sometimes inside my ears there is all this earwax, etcetera. It tastes really gross.”

Casey looks at the TV and sees it is already 4pm. Has she eaten today? She rises and pads her way into the kitchen to start boiling water for some boxed macaroni and cheese. “You shouldn’t taste it, then, Hedwig.”

Casey goes through the methodical steps of making food for the man in the next room who believed himself to be nine years old. She wonders about Joseph, perhaps struggling for air at this very moment. 

“Look what I built.”

Casey looks up from where she has been staring into the water, waiting for it to boil. Hedwig presents her with a boxy looking vehicle of some kind. “Nice.”

“It’s a cop car. The Beast is gonna come and smash it and kill all the cops.”

“Mm.” Casey sees the water has begun to boil and opens the box of macaroni. “Do you work tomorrow?”

“I  _ never  _ work!” Hedwig announces defiantly, zooming his car off the counter and flipping it through the air.

“Dennis, I mean.”

“Nope. We’ll be here with you allllllll day long.” He shoots Casey a suspicious look over his shoulder. “What do you and Dennis do when you’re here all by yourselves, etcetera?”

Casey feels herself reddening and chews at her lip. “Not much. I am in the garden quite a bit. Dennis builds things, kind of like you. But not with Legos.” Casey stirs the macaroni. “Have you heard anything from the Militia?”

Hedwig is silent, so Casey looks up. He is carefully adding guns to the roof of his car. “Not supposed to tell you,” he mumbles.

“Hedwig,” Casey says softly. He looks up at her with solemn grey eyes. “You can trust me.” The words feel like oil in her mouth; they taste of blood. How many times had she heard them spoken to her by  _ him _ ? With his huge hands cupping her face, his dark eyes wide open like black holes. 

Hedwig holds his car up in front of his face, pointing it at her and closing one eye to take aim. “I heard Mr. Dennis fighting with Ms. Patricia. I don’t know what they were fighting about. But they were yellin’ and stuff. And it was about not going out no more.” Hedwig drops his car. It hits the linoleum floor and shatters into tiny bricks. “I wanna bath.”

“Hedwig, dinner is almost ready.”

But he’s already down the hall, and she can hear the sound of the faucets. 

She brings him his food once it’s done, finds him stretched out in the tub, half covered with bubbles. He is whispering something to himself, a look of childish concentration on his face. He sits up when he sees her, and she cannot help but watch the water sluice off his body. He hoists himself so that he braced on his arms, grinning at her like a loon. The muscles of his shoulders stand out, slick with soap. “Will you wash me?” he asks.

Casey scrunches her eyes closed, but it's no use; the memories work through her mind like hard fingers digging into the flesh of her brain. She sets his bowl of macaroni and cheese on the rim of the tub and digs her fingernails into her face.

_ “Won’t you wash my back?” _

_ “The water is too hot.” _

_ “Come in. You’ll get used to it. Don’t complain. You don’t need a washcloth, put that back. Just use your hands.” _

“Hey, hey.” Casey feels one of them peeling her hands away from her eyes. She can feel her nails pulling out of her eyelids, and the wetness of blood and her tears. “Jesus Christ.” Dennis. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He picks her up like she’s a little girl, and Casey nestles her head into his shoulder. He is wet and warm, a little slippery, but she is not afraid of him dropping her. 

Dennis cleans the blood off her face and carefully presses small bandaids over the deeper gashes around her eyes. It is a while before she can open her eyes again, and when she does he is a streaked painting of flesh and eyes and the ruddy wall paint of her bedroom. She blinks until he is himself again, his hard expression softened with sadness. “You okay?”

She nods. He isn’t touching her. He isn’t much for touching. “I’m sorry about last night. What I said to you. You’re not a monster, you’re not a bad person. You know I don’t really think that. You know how much I love you.”

At her last three words he draws in a sharp, unsteady breath, looking away from her as he stands up. “What do you need?” he asks, picking up her dirty clothes with fingertips and depositing them in her hamper. Her caretaker, her protector, her lover. He never seems to lose patience with her, no matter what she’s like, and he is always there when she needs him. He loves no one but her, needs nothing in return but her love. She feels at moments like this that she could not have dreamed up a more perfect man. “You hungry?”

She is hungry. “I made some mac and cheese.”

“I’ll get you some.”

“Thanks, Dennis.”

He’s out the door, disappearing down the hallway. Casey lays her head back on her pillow. She’s only been awake for an hour, but she feels like she could sleep for an age.

~*~

It is a foul, human place, full of screeching machines and the caustic stench of chemicals. There is the smell of blood and death, but it is not the sweet fruit smell of true death; it is the smell of incisions and sterility and decay. 

He longs for his home: that desolate land of creation - how beautiful, how beautiful. Fruit trees, swollen with fruit, branches bending with the bulging juiciness of them. Coyotes and mountain lions, their glossy eyes tracking the movements of strap-thin hares and field mice. He could eat their hearts but that isn’t what he’s hungry for.

“It’s the only way.” The mewling boy chitters at him, tears beading on his gummy eyelids. “I’ve been thinking and researching. I’ve tried to find something else that makes sense but I can’t. It’s the only way.”

A low pulsing growl builds in his chest. He feels the honeyed rush of possibility. “Then so it shall be. You have done well.”

The boy begins to sob: loud, scraping sounds. He looks disfigured and inhuman, a broken toy beneath starched white sheets. The glowing lights overhead give him a sallow complexion. Perhaps a swift death would be more merciful… but no, no, he has not yet served his full usefulness. “I can’t…” the boy wails, “maybe we shouldn’t. She doesn’t deserve that. Maybe it isn’t worth this. She’s innocent.”

The Beast curls his lips back against his teeth in a smile. “She is not innocent.”

He unfolds his glorious body, and the boy shrinks into his bedclothes. The Beast bounds out the window in one powerful leap. 

The other man has kept him busy with the meat of traitors and enemies, but the world has gone quiet now, and the other man grows weary. He is close, he can sense it. The others are nearly there. He has almost everything he needs. She is the final piece but the time has not yet come for her.

He is patient, like any true predator.

~*~

Dennis comes to the Light in a rush, his heart thundering, his skin slick with sweat. He is standing bare-chested in the yard of their small home, looking through the window of Casey’s bedroom.

“No,” he breathes. “No. Not her.”

The black, unblinking eyes in the depths of him glitter with cruel laughter. 

~*~

“Did you take my fucking shirt?”

Casey starts at the sound of the shouted question. She had been hoping that Jade would leave her alone to read in the yard; they’ve been at each other’s throats all day, Jade sniping at Casey for every little thing she did. 

“Answer my fucking question, bitch.”

Casey presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She doesn’t know how to tell Jade to  _ back off _ . “Yeah, I wore one of your--”

Before she can finish, Jade has lunged forward, fast as a viper. She grabs Casey’s book and - in an impressive display of strength - rips it apart. “This should teach you to take things that aren’t yours you fucking cunt. You think you  _ own  _ us. You think you can do whatever you want. Well now you know. This time it’s the book. Next time it’s your fucking face.”

Casey feels the rage swell through her like molten lava; it burns through her arms, into her fingertips; it sets her jaw like concrete. Before she has processed the thought she is on her feet, her hands locked around Jade’s throat. She follows Jade’s startled, retreating backward step, pressing her face into Jade’s face. “ _ Don’t you ever threaten me again,”  _ Casey snarls, her voice a strangled hiss. 

She thinks quickly, wildly, of the knives in the kitchen. She could get one before Jade realized where she was going; she imagines the feel of plunging it into the alter’s chest, the hard crack of the blade over Kevin’s ribs. Would one of the others come forward to stop her? Would they kill her to protect themselves?

Casey looks into Jade’s face. The alter’s eyes are round, her mouth parted. Her expression is one of fear. Casey would know; Casey has worn it on her own face a thousand times; a million. From the edge of her vision, Casey sees Jade’s hand draw back and curl into a fist---

And Jade’s brows bend down, her mouth settling into a furious frown. Dennis pries Casey’s fingers from his throat. 

The wind of Casey’s rage has blown out in an instant. She watches with a sense of unreality as Dennis pushes her back a step. “What the hell is this?” he asks softly.

“Would Jade have punched me?” Casey asks instead.

Dennis’ nostrils flare and he breaths out sharply. “Of course not. I’ll never let anybody hurt you.”

Dennis looks alarmed as Casey claps her hand over her mouth, trying to muffle a sob. She crumples forward like she  _ has  _ been punched. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she gasps, tears boiling her eyes. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know why I did that. I wanted to kill you, I wanted to kill Kevin, I was so angry and I wanted you to be sorry and I thought for a second I would do it, if I had had the knife I would’ve done it, and I---”

He sets his hands awkwardly on her shoulders, bending his serious, bewildered face to hers. “Casey, hey, Casey. It’s okay. Take a breath.”

Casey tries to get hold of herself as Dennis guides her to the living room and folds her onto the couch. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m such a mess. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Dennis shakes his head. “Just… just breath. Everything is okay. I’m going to get Patricia.”

Casey snaps her head up, but before she can stop him, he is elongating into that bloodless, bird-like creature: the Priestess. “You’re upsetting everyone with this little display.”

Casey withers at the sound of that sneering, imperious tone. She sinks backwards into the couch, lowering her eyes. “I know,” she says softly. “There’s… there’s something inside of me, Patricia. And it wants to hurt people.”

“Mm.” Patricia purses her mouth, unimpressed. She glides into the kitchen and, from what Casey can see, starts to prepare tea. “You think you’re so unique,” Patricia says, sing-song. “Special, special Casey, hurt by her bad uncle, spared by the Beast. But you’re not special. You’re just like anyone.”

Casey mulls on these poisonous words for the length of time it takes Patricia to re-emerge and hand her a steaming cup. Patricia stands over her, looming and fearsome looking in the strange light of the evening.

“We all have bad things inside of us, child.” Patricia’s face is calm, and her voice, though unsympathetic, is not unkind. “We all have our beasts. Not all of them are as powerful as  _ ours _ , of course, but they exist within every person. The more we suffer, the greater and more ferocious they become. We can do unto others at least as much as was done unto us. You are no exception.”

“I don’t want to do that to people,” Casey says, feeling her body buzz with numbness. She blinks slowly. “I don’t want to be like… like  _ him _ .”

“Why not?” Casey looks up in surprise. Patricia gives her a slow smile, as thin and sharp as a blade. “You already have such power. Dennis obeys you, and now Jade fears you. Barry cannot resist his lust for your body. You have so many of them under your little thumb, and you can do to them what you like. Why not enjoy the fruits of your labor?”

“No,” says Casey, shaking her head. “No. I am not like that. I am not that person. I don’t want to talk to you anymore, Patricia. Or Jade. I want… I want Dennis back.”

Patricia sneers, but either decides to humor her or Dennis hears himself being called for; a moment later he is back, towering over Casey with just the same sense of tense authority but a look of awkwardness and concern on his face. 

Casey sets her tea aside and stares up at him. “Dennis,” she says.

He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can’t…” he trails off, looking pained. He will not meet her eye. “I can’t do this, Casey. There’s things going on. With the others. In the world. And I can’t keep you safe from them all. I don’t know how to help you.”

She feels - well, why doesn’t she just admit it? - she feels her heart breaking. “What do you want me to do?”

He shakes his head. “I just wish we could get away from each other for a little while.”

The words pierce her like shrapnel. Casey feels her breath stuttering in her chest and forces herself to exhale, to hide her heart slamming against her ribs like it wanted to escape. “I see.”

Dennis looks up at her, and she can’t read his expression. Sorrow, she guesses. Defeat. “I’m going to go work on the car for a while. I’ll be in the garage if you need something.”

She nods. When he has left, Casey slumps backwards into the couch, feeling shattered. She should have known it would come to this - it always, always, always came to this. People loved her until they knew her, until they got through her mind and to her heart. Until they met the monster in the wilderness, until they sensed the animal waiting around the next bend of rock, until they tugged at the twisted roots growing down from the pale small flower of her. 

She had hoped Kevin, of all people in the world, might understand. Might love her anyway. But how could she ask him to love in her what she did not love in herself?

~*~

Casey awakens in the middle of the night. She had been dreaming strangely of the woods, and she thought she remembered the carcass of the deer speaking to her: slow, quiet words she can’t remember. 

She thinks of the man sleeping just down the hall. She thinks of the strangeness of the world. She thinks of her future might be: whether it will be with him, and what it would be without him.

He doesn’t wake as she comes into his room, not even as she climbs into his bed, the mattress dipping with her weight. “Hey.”

His eyes open unevenly, and he is so beautiful like this, vulnerable and soft. “Baby girl,” he says.

She stretches out along the warmth of his body. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Mm.” His eyes are shut again, his breathing even.

She presses a kiss to his bearded cheek. “I love you,” she breathes into his skin: almost a prayer. “I am so glad you found me in that car that day.”

His eyes creak open. He blinks at her drowsily. Barry is a creature of experience, not feeling. He is kindness and humor and bright, jubilant laughter; sometimes he is sarcasm, cattiness and spite. But whatever he is is light and quick, it is never deep, and he could never tolerate the long slow agony of love. It’s not his fault that he is what he is, and Casey has never blamed him, but looking into the soft lines of his face now, the way he gazes at her with such easy, light affection, she wishes fiercely that Kevin could love her as she loves him: without a single part spared, with every inch of her being. 

He presses his mouth softly to hers. 

“I’m sorry to wake you,” she mumbles against his lips. “Do you want me to leave?”

She feels his smile, and his fingers threading through her hair. “Oh, honey,” he sighs, trailing his mouth down her neck. The wetness and the warmth moves fluidly through her, and she finds her hands roaming down his body. “I never, ever want you to leave.”

She closes her eyes as he kisses her breasts, wishing she believed him.

~*~

He has murdered sixteen helpless women.

Sometimes the reality of this truth flip flops through his awareness like a fish struggling on land. He can remember each one of their faces. He can’t remember their names. 

Sixteen women.

Pushing eighty-five, Dennis drives along the stick-straight ribbon of highway 99. 

_ Sacrifice,  _ whispers Patricia, snake-like and soft.  _ Necessary sacrifice. _

He had eaten their hearts. He can remember the taste now, if he thinks about it. The stringiness of the muscle. It had been stuck between his teeth. 

Back in their small house in the middle of nowhere, Casey had had tears in her eyes as she walked with him to his car. She had not spoken.  _ I just wish we could get away from each other for a little while. _

What he should have said:  _ I murdered sixteen women, and I am terrified that I will soon murder you.  _

What might her heart taste like? Within the putrid depths of Kevin’s soul, the Beast rumbles with hungry longing. 

Dennis, pushing 100 on the stick straight ribbon of highway 99, swerves the car towards an oak tree.

Barry comes to the light with a gasp, jerking the car back towards the lane; the wheels skid along the asphalt, the brakes squealing. He manages to get control before they spin out, and then gets the car stopped on the side of the road so he can catch his breath. 

Barry leans back in his seat, breathing raggedly. He feels something on his face and gingerly touches his cheeks: they are wet with tears.


End file.
